


Set the Fire to the Third Bar

by seraphim_grace



Series: Angel 'Verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Powers, Betrayal, Demons, Gay Bar, Hell Hounds, Hotel Sex, Knitting, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Road Trip, Satan - Freeform, Valkyrie - Freeform, ancient gods, banshee - Freeform, fae, witch of endor - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-12
Updated: 2010-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-08 21:52:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 69,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/79874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/seraphim_grace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean wonders how much is too much when you've already past that line and just how changed he is from being in hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which Dean laments that there is no coffee and Castiel doesn't quite understand that this might be a problem

Dean doesn't know why he was plucked from Hell, but the little things every day remind him how grateful he is. He looks around at the oblivious people and wonders if he was ever like that, unable to appreciate the magic and majesty of the rain.

The first time it rains, it really rains, he shucks off his leather coat and just stands in the carpark with his head cast back and pretends not to notice the angel perched on the roof of the no-tell motel.

Castiel does not always let him know that he's there but Dean always knows.

Sometimes it's the sound of his breathing, or the scent of him underneath the lingering odours of the damp motel wallpaper and cigarette stinking carpet. At first he doesn't recognise it, except as a faint childhood memory of Christmas.

Castiel smells of frankincense and a lingering hint of myrrh, but to Dean it will always be the hallway of Pastor Jim's, burnt scented oil and old books, and memories of an another unfamilial holiday.

The memories are fond though, of Sammy as a small fat bundle of energy, into everything, face smeared with chocolate and cookie crumbs, too short jumpers and and striped good will socks, and Dean running after him just like he always does.

With the spices and a general freshness of ozone Castiel smells of the only home that Dean knows.

Castiels' fingertips against the side of Dean's neck as he sleeps are chill, but not really cold, but more like the feeling of marble warmed in human hands.

Dean isn't sure when Castiel comes, or why, only that it happens and he knows after that Castiel has been there, his strange warmth and lingering frankincense smell in the sheets after he is gone.

Yet despite the angel's presence, or perhaps because of it, Dean dreams of Hell.  
He wakes with senses sharpened by pain, his fingers splay over the ruffled sheets to the spot that is not quite as cool as the rest of the empty bed, and air that almost smells of christmas.

Castiel no longer mentions Sam's conspicous absences and Dean stoically ignores that there might be a problem.

Dean's good at ignoring problems.

And Angels that watch him sleep.

 

The coffee is thin on his tongue, mostly chickory and filler. The coffee making facilities are woefully inadequate, even for their very low rent motel, normally Sam, who lives on caffeine like other people do oxygen, has a tin of something in the car.

Yet wherever Sam's been going it's not to Walmart - the coffee ran out a week ago.  
Dean offered some to the angel, who he discovered like the bitter ancient tastes, salt, liorice and nutmeg, asks if it is a beverage and not a gravy and if so why so many people care about it so much.

He's so very earnest that Dean can't help but laugh which just leaves the angel looking confused and perhaps a little hurt.

"Tell you what, buddy," and Dean's not sure himself when Castiel went from Stalker to Buddy, "next chance I get I'll go to a proper shop, like Bobby does and get some good coffee." It's the only thing Bobby does get from a snooty store, as he words it, because you don't skimp on the coffee if you want to save the world.

More hunts that Dean likes run entirely on it, sleep forgotten, memorably apart from one where he discovered that four cans of pepsi max really was too much, and Sam threatening to salt and burn him if he didn't come down soon.

It always comes back to Sam.

Sam has forgotten to get more coffee leaving Dean with the cheap free chickory crap and Sam waits until he's asleep to leave him.

He's always back by morning, there isn't a single hunt so that he might have stopped at even a seven eleven.

Before, in his head Dean can only picture it as "before", Sam never forgot the important things, ammo, back up and coffee.

Part of him hopes Sam has plenty of ammo, even if it's just to protect him through the night.

Dean doesn't regret that Sam's getting laid, and he's not, because afterall an angel in the bed can be quite tricky to explain, even to a one night girl.

And Dean's not quite sure how to explain a one night girl to the angel.

Dean has come to know that angels seriously put a crimp on a guy's sex drive. It's rare to even get it up for his right hand, some vaseline and free motel porn - free being the biggest turn on usually, when a soldier of the lord is asking genuine sounding questions about why such a pretty girl would have her breasts distended like that.

In many ways Castiel is frighteningly old, and in many ways very naive.

Dean is often torn between wanting to dive for cover before him, or wrap him up in cotton wool because he's just too adorable to be let out alone.

Mostly he turns this into a practised disdain and a miraculous amount of self loathing that he takes out on the angel, who doesn't suffer it at all.

There is an unspoken line between them. Castiel took Dean from Hell and if Dean goes too far he can put him back in.

Castiel only made the threat once. He's only needed to make it once. But that was before he appeared in the Impala as Dean wolfed his way through the Hallowe'en candy, the angel plucking a peppermint ribbon from between his own legs, being sat on Dean's stash, unwraps it from it's cellophane wrapper, and with curious fingers copies Dean and pops it into his own mouth.

He doesn't know if Castiel liked it, only that he never took a second candy.

The angel is beautiful, and it's something that Dean appreciates because he has been to Hell, even Uriel who is a dick, is beautiful, and part of Dean wonders if he'll make those happy little recognizing sounds when he tries root licorice. Enough that Sam is horrified when he finds it in the glove compartment.

There is always candy in the glove compartment, sweet sugary things that Dean rolls around in his mouth as he sings along offkey with his tapes, but now it's root licorice that he found in the sort of confectioners that only Bobby could locate, probably between a magic shop; a practitioner of some ancient and forgotten paganism, and the place he gets coffee.

Dean refuses to admit it's for those self satisfied little noises that Castiel makes, and the way the furrow between his brows smooth out, for only a moment, and Dean wants to give it all to him, the whole damn box, but Bobby warned him and he doesn't want to be responsible when the Heavenly Host loses the damn war because Castiel's vessel had the shits from eating too much licorice.

For the want of a toilet Heaven was lost and it would be all Dean's fault because as sure as shit Castiel, who ate week old Thai leftovers that even Dean was leery of, wouldn't know better.

Interestingly he didn't see the angel for days after the Thai.

 

The coffee royally sucks.

Dean imagines that he can see things through it, because it certainly tastes that watery and he's angry at Sam for being out all night, and not getting coffee, because even the shit that they usually drink and whine about is better than this free shit that the motel left out, and for possibly getting laid without an angel of the lord asking questions, sat on the edge of the motel room dining chair, and most of all for not being there.

Castiel doesn't understand, of course, but stands up when Dean finally loses his temper and pulls on his leather coat, "You and me, Cas, are going out for breakfast."

Castiel is baffled, "aren't you going to wait for your brother? you normally eat with him."

"No," Dean tells him, "I'm going to get coffee that doesn't taste like I've washed the fucking floor with it." Castiel does not approve of blasphemy but normal cursing slips by just fine. "And I'm going to get the kind of pancakes that can kill you, and it's going to be fucking good because it'll just sit around in my arteries and I'll be too crapped up for even the most ugly of all the uglies we hunt to want to eat me." This line is delivered with his most shit eating grin, but Castiel always sees through it.

The angel laughs, it's a strange sound and one that Dean hasn't heard before. "you are truly unique, Dean Winchester," he tells him but as Dean walks down the motel stairs to where he parked he realises that the angel is gone.

Dean doesn't say, even to himself, that he feels the angel's lack like a physical blow, even if it is true.

The impala, box of root licorice and trunk of full of guns, is gone.

 

The diner is a good twenty minutes walk. Walk! And Dean curses all the way and is moments at all times from phoning the police and is only stopped because he's not sure he's not still on the most wanted list, and not becuase it's his brother.

During the walk he surprises the passers with both his cursing, which is inventive, and his ability to clench his fists until the knuckles are white and using his very stance to promise the sort of violence that hunters investigate.

The diner's waitress, Rhonda, has a sort of earthy ruddiness to her, she might have been pretty twenty years ago but bad skin, terrible dye jobs, a fifty a day habit and a thankless job have given her the look of someone waiting for something, anything, to happen.

He's too pissed to flirt, even at the promise of free pie, something he always does. He knows he's gorgeous enough and is not above using it to his best advantage. Especially for pie. There are set lines for every waitress in every diner across America, programmed into him. Hers would be Rhonda, I bet you hate that song and then he'd grin.

She comes over, heavy hips swinging almost enough to hide the belly behind the apron, and she takes the opportunity to flirt. She has wide hips, and is older than Dean likes but it's a thankless job and it costs nothing to be nice.

Even this annoyed he's nice to her because he's done jobs like this and he's just passing through, but he's not really in the mood for flirting. So he smiles when she calls him Hun', and lets her choose for him based on what she knows is good.

Sam never understands these acts of seemingly random friendliness, but he gets cold bacon and leathery eggs, and they only half fill his cup on refills.

There's nothing random about this at all, it's something painless and free that he's picked up from Bobby, a quick grin and a nice word get much more than a rude attitude and a big tip.

The pancakes she brings out are fresh and studded with tinned blueberries, the coffee is fresh and not hours old, and her smile is genuine. She keeps the table clean and waits on him more than her other customers.

 

He's just finishing his third helping of the very good pancakes, they melt perfectly on the tongue, spongy and then sweet from the syrup, when Sam comes in, looking around for him. Dean gestures with his head then goes back to his pancakes.

He considers possibly ripping his brother a new one, but instead just answers by turning back to his pancakes, making sure that Sam knows that right now he is less important than his carbs and coffee.

"Hey." Sam Says sliding into the booth, "I didn't think you'd be up yet." Rhonda comes over and offers him coffee from the jug she's carrying. She takes Dean's cup away to fill it. "So I took the car to get some supplies. Do you believe this place hasn't got a Walmart? I had to go to Publix." He says the name like a curse word. Walmart might as well sponsor hunters, they get most of what they use there, and it's anonymous, although Dean has his own theories about the greeters.

Coffee, cheap silver jewellery that melted down to coat ammo, ammo, tent pegs for staking things, tees that invariably get ruined with demon guts, candy, chips, molson beer and mountain dew. It's considered normal by Walmart standards.

He knows that from standing in line.

"Hey, Sammy, do you think that Walmart has a secret occult book branch just for hunters? you know to thank us for the custom." To Sam the question comes from far out of left field, and he just splutters into his coffee. "You know, where Bobby gets his tweflth century Chinese books?" He chews thoughtfully, appreciating the bitter sweet splash of the tinned blueberries exploding under his teeth, and then the sweet syrup and the moist meat of the pancakes, "or is it places like Publix that cost more?"

"Dude," Sam says, "you make no sense before your first coffee."

And Dean offers him a fake grin, full of purple pancake mastication to show a casual but fond disdain. "They've got to come from somewhere, Sammy," he tells him through his mouthful of food.

"Perhaps he has a source, we all know Bobby knows things. Did you know that he speaks Japanese?"

Dean rolls his eyes. "Demo, mochiron." Of course it's the only phrase Dean can say in Japanese picked up from a late night movie.

Sam is speechless for a moment and Dean appreciates the victory over his genius brother, in the way that only brothers do. He waves Rhonda over for more coffee. It's bitter foul and tastes like ashes after it's swallowed. It tastes mortal and lingers on his tongue. He wonders what coffee tasted like "before", before he appreciated the ebullient way that good coffee fills his mouth sliding thinly and hotly down his throat and then the burnt offering aftertaste. He wonders if he tasted it at all.

There were so many things that he didn't so he has orgiastic moments of awareness. The sharp splash of blueberries, the waxy sweetness of cherries and the too sweet chemical burn of mountain dew.

Coffee is a burnt offering to a god he has no choice but to believe in, afterall he is haunted by an angel.

Sam is quick to change the subject back to familiar ground, hunting, the growing price of petrol and that he bought his brother the new AC/DC album, but he got it on CD because they don't sell cassettes anymore, and he knows Dean won't play it because he doesn't know all the words, drum beats and chord progressions to every track.  
Dean, Sam suspectsm hasn't bought an album, or even shoplifted one, since Metallica released the Black Album and is happy in his niche.

Sometimes Sam sits in the car and considers puncturing his own ear drums, but it's worth it because it's part of Dean; and he's never admit it but when Dean was - in his own head he won't say the word - when Dean was gone he'd put on Def Leppard and play Gods of War loud and pretend he was just waiting for Dean to come out of the gas station, or motel, or bar.

The little lies he told himself made it bearable. The funny thing is how quickly that they built up it was hard to tell them from the truth, especially with all the lies they tell for hunting.

Dean is his constant and Dean was gone.

 

If hunting is their day job then bog standard spirit possession exorcism is their stock in trade, and this is no different. If they were exterminators then demons might be opossums, but most of their work is cockroaches.

This job isn't even that glamourous but it needs to be done. A spirit of some kind has possessed a local tree beside a children's playground and takes to grabbing at passing kids. This was a local legend- a warning not to go into the woods. All the locals know it, don't go near the Widow's tree, but the town grew and there is a playground next to it now, and the developers would have levelled it if not for the protection order, and some mouthy kid got scratched.

The widow's tree is a local tourist attraction. Phony ghost hunters come to see it, whispering the legend to themselves as they burn black candles, drink cheap wine and now fall drunkenly off the swings.

Most places have a legend like this, the difference is that this one is real. It's a simple job, one night, two at most, a rest and a protective charm hung on the tree where the ghost hunters won't steal it, which stops the more physical manifestations. The ghost is harmless afterall and it's not worth the effort of properly casting it out.  
It certainly isn't worth the effort of finding who haunts it, then finding their body to salt and burn the bones when a simple charm does the same job.

Often hunters arrive at hauntings like this as if it's a convention, relishing the easy job and the opportunity to rest in small town America without the threat of some painful and exotic death waiting for them.

Dean is happy to let Sam take the lead on this, a bit of local research, some jewellery making when they find which charm will work best, that means visiting Joanns for the stuff and Dean hates going in there, and then decorating a tree that might try to claw your eyes out.

Dean doesn't see the point when the local diner has pie. It's not the best pie he's ever had, that was a diner in a small town just south of the Canadian border that was just plain freaky, but had cherry pie worth being damned for. This is a good close second.

It's an apple pie with a handmade golden coloured shortcrust pastry served on a bed of bright yellow vanilla custard. The pie is hot and the custard's chilled and Dean would marry the woman who made it if she wasn't already married and ten, hell five, years younger.

He's making happy noises with each mouthful, the coffee is made with a rich strong bean, because the owner's Italian and it comes with a biscotti as light as air and crisp as winter, and a slice of a light lemon fresh bread studded with fruit.

"Oh man,"" he says as he noices the angel at his table, "You've got to try this."

"So this is what is meant by a cakewalk," Castiel says, "You eat cake."

The delivery is so dry that Dean doesn't realise at first that it might be a joke, but the angel does reach out for the fork. "The demon is here."

"Fuck!" Dean swears because it's the only word he can think of, "it's just a fucking tree, why is she here?" It's clear that there is only one demon between them.

"I am not privy to that information, only that she is here. Perhaps she doesn't like you well enough to think that you'd shirk simple tasks in exchange for cake." He then licks the last of the custard from his upper lip.

"Pie," Dean corrects automatically, but he's pulling on his coat even as he says it.

 

The Widow's Tree looks like a tree that should be huanted and Dean aches with the angel's loss, he appears and there is this sensation that Dean only notices when he is gone.

The tree's a bleak black thing, old and spidery. There is a twist in the bark that looks like an old woman's face and a smear of blood across one of the roots that's black and swarming with flies that buzz around him and he swats at them futiely as they circle his head. He has a momentary flashback of a house in Indiana with insects trying to get inside the house he and Sam were trapped in.

Sam isn't here. The blood is days old and its clearly the reason that the tree suddenly became so active, the ghost is probably pissed at the flies, and Sam is with the demon, he's starting to think of Ruby in Castiel's monochrome terms - the demon.

There are things that Dean knows that he learned from his father, marine things that Sam had no patience for, things like bivouacing and how to build a blind and how to track.

Sam's easy to follow on soft earth, Dean teases him that he's part yeti because his feet are certainly big enough, and it's a joke that never gets old in the specialist shoe stores that they have to go to. Big and tall stores are the same the nation over, with Sam size shoes next to the muumuus and chafing gel.

Muddy foot prints lead across a carpark and just around the corner is Sam, pleastered against a small dark haired woman, one that looks like that girl from High School Musical, and he's hunched over and his hands are on her ribcage under her red Gap top and it's slightly pushed up. He has his tongue in her mouth, and his knee between her thighs and Dean wants to vomit.

Instead he just turns and walks away.


	2. In which Dean wonders if even the really good coffee is worth all this shit, because he just doesn’t understand any more, and sometimes all you can do is run.

Dean expects Castiel to be in the park, perched at the end of the bench with his cold comfort and consternated expression that suggests that he is totally confused by both his human vessel and humanity in general. He's not.

There are kids in heavy winter coats on the swings, gloved hands tight on the chains and the only sound is the metal creaking of their movement.

He wants Castiel to be there.

Sam is fucking the demon.

His brother, his Sammy, whom he fed and washed and diapered is fucking a demon.

Their mother was killed by a demon.

Jess was killed by a demon.

Dean went to Hell, and Sam is fucking a demon.

It's a slap in the face, one that hurts even more because he'd been in Hell and he feels everything just that bit more keenly, and it's Sam, his baby Sammy, with his yeti feet and silly floppy hair who sleeps on his tummy with his socks on and is the only thing that Dean truly loves - and it's a demon.

It's a fucking piece of poison black gas wrapped in a meat sack, and you know that this girl, this Vanessa Hudgens look-a-like didn't volunteer like Castiel's vessel or is as well cared for.

Demons ride their meat puppets hard and Sam knows that and yet he's fucking it, and Dean wants to pull his hair out and scream but there are kids on the swings and an amulet in the Widow's Tree and his car keys are sticking him in the thigh.

He runs his thumb over the raised lines of the hex symbol he uses as a keyring and it makes his mind up for him.

 

He's on the road for hours when Castiel appears in the passenger seat, immediately rummaging in the glove compartment for the licorice. "I suppose it was an inevitability that he would push you too far."

"Did you know," Dean is seething, "that he was fucking it?"

Castiel says nothing, prize now found, he leans back against the leather seat and then belts himself in, liquorice held in his palm. "I know only what I'm told." He says finally, then pops the candy into his mouth. "I knew only that he was with her."

"Yeah, he was with her," Dean snarls. "God," the familiar blasphemy falls out before he realises it. Castiel further furrows his brow but says nothing although he does not normally tolerate it. "He knows better, she's a fucking demon for fuck's sake." 

Dean doesn't even know that he's saying it, it's just a comfortable curse word, an irritant only to the angel and although he normally watches it carefully he is undone by anger and hurt and rage.

He doesn't even realise that he hasn't turned on his music. His knuckles are white at ten and two. "A fucking demon, Cas, a fucking demon."

He forces the impala around a truck quickly, too quickly and the typres screech. Castiel grits his teeth and clutches the woven strap of his seatbelt. A few horns bleat in protest but he ignores them. "And I was eating fucking pie."

"You are not responsible for your brother's actions." The angel says and it's clearly meant to soothe but it doesn't feel like that - it feels like a platitude.

"I fucking raised him, Cas, who's responsible if not me?"

"He is," Castiel says bluntly. "He was given choice and because he can choose he can make mistakes."

It's clear he has chosen the wrong word because Dean explodes. "A mistake?!"

"If you can't choose wrongly," Castiel continues, "there is no point in choice."

"You're going to defend him, you?"

"No," Castiel is calm, "I will defend choice, because it is God's will that you can choose, but it is meaningless to have choice is there is not a right choice and a wrong choice. Everyone is responsible for their own choices. You brother made his choice himself, you did not make it for him, so you are not responsible."

"You suck at this," Dean says and it's honest, "it's like being comforted by the pope or an evangelist hitting you over the head with a bible."

"He is wrong," Castiel continues that pops a second piece of licorice betwee his lips, knowing that Dean has bought them for him. It's a piece of black flashing between white teeth. "You are not to blame." His tongue is stained dark brown when he licks his lips, the liqorice colouring his saliva with an oily stain across his lower lip, and Dean knows it will taste of licorice if he kisses him. He doesn't know where that thought came from.

"He will search you out." Castiel hasn't noticed the change.

"I just need time." Dean says, "or I'll kill him myself." He mutters darkly, almost under his breath. "- With Ruby, even if she wasn't a demon, she's a skank." He pulls the car into a service station to get gas. There is a calming reliability to the indicator clicking. "I can't believe that he'd do that to me."

"I cannot be with you for all of this, my duties call." Castiel says, "I am needed elsewhere, but my heart will be with you, and I will make provision, I will come as often as I am able." His brow further furrows, there has got to be a permanent crease there by now, and he takes another piece of the liquorice. "God loves you, Dean, and does not hold you responsible even if you yourself do."

Then as Dean unclips his seatbelt there is that terrible emptiness that he only notices when Castiel is gone and he has a dark moment when he wonders, with a wicked selfishness, what the angel gave up to give him this failed attempt at comfort.

Castiel went to Hell for him and Castiel is there when he's needed, but he just puts the feeling away and starts pumping gas letting the caustic chemical smell wash away the lingering afterscent of frankincense.

 

He stocks up on chips and soda in the gas station store, picking up a few comics that have new issues. He'll read them and leave them in a motel lobby for some passing kid, keeping the ones that either have really cool art or a hint that the writer has done some real research into their supernatural villain. Those ones he leaves with Bobby.

Bobby, even though he won't admit it, is hopelessly addicted to The Darkness and Dean, who reads it because he buys it for Bobby, finds himself having Jackie Estacado moments, but with a grimace he realises that it's Sam that's gone over to the great Dark.

He adds a few more bags of chips, red liqorice laces, a box of real fruit cereal, microwaves a beef burrito and then a large cup of coffee from the unlabelled coffee maker. He pays for it all with a credit card in the name Richard Gleason.

He takes the paper bag out to the cat, setting it into the back seat and peels the lid off the coffee and takes a long mouthful. Then he damn near spits it out because it has some sweet wierd flavour like he's tipped maple syrup into it. It's the last straw in a particularly shitty day that at least is mostly over.

The only thing that stops him going back into the store in a Denis Leary style rage rant is that it's not the poor clerk's fault. He drops the whole coffee, lid and all, into the waste bin when the cell rings.

Obviously he's not done being fate's bitch because it's Sam.

He cuts it off without answering.

Sam just rings again.

And again.

And again.

He finally answers. "Dude, where are you? I've been looking all over."

"I'm at a gas station, about four hours out. Also I'm going to say I'm kinda hurt it's taken this long for you to even notice." He leans against the car, his body language promising violence to anyone near. He's wound like a watch spring. "I saw you." He says, "and if there is a hope in," he still chokes on the word, "hell that I'm going to forgive you this side of the armageddon you are going to give me time."

"You're not my boyfriend," Sam answers, "and you're not my dad, you can't give me those kinds of ultimatums."

"No, Sammy, I'm your brother, and I went to Hell for you whilst you were balling one it's whores." Then he cuts the call.

Sam calls again.

Dean switches the cell off and throws it into the car. He may be fate's bitch but that doesn't make him Sam's.

 

He stops in a small town he doesn't bother to learn the name of but it has a cheap hotel with a single room that has everything it needs, a lone double bed with a bland flowery spread. It's called Hotel Dusk which amuses him for some reason. There is a bar and a restaurant, but other than that it's the same as every other hotel he's stayed in.

The paintings of fruit that decorate the place are a cut above the usual standard, but that doesn't change anything other than he wants to remember it in case he comes this way again.

There's a kid on the stairs, a girl playing with a doll with brightly coloured hair and huge creepy eyes. It looks like a plastic talisman made to keep away Rawheads, just in a pink poodle skirt and pigtails. She matches his annoyed glare with one of her own and he doesn't bother to grin at her.

She's the kind of girl who'll grow up to be a stunner, red hair she'll have to grow into, freckles that will be charming later, but for now make her the butt of the jokes. She's wearing a charm bracelet where the charms are all religious protective symbols but something suggests that the kid lives here and isn't just another hunter's brat just passing through.

She has a haunted look that's the same as his own.

He brushes past her on the stairs to his sparse room. The decor is beige and bland and makes a pleasant change from the usual Elvis jungle room that they normally get. He corrects himself, not they, he.

He throws his pack, a thing inherited from John, on the bed and collapses in the chair with his head between his hands for long, long moments awaiting the usual smell of frankincense and christmasses past.

It doesn't come.

 

Dinner is homemade soup, again reassuring him that this place is unusual. There are great big chunks of meat in it that practically dissolve on the tongue into sweet tasting shreds, and the gravy is thick. It's all Dean can do not to gag.

One of the first lessons that any soldier learns is to grab food and sleep when they're offered. So he forces down the soup although it makes him sick, despite that's it's good - real good, and the bread is freshly baked and thickly spread with real butter.

There is a whole roasted potato and steamed veg to the side on a small plate.

The hunter brat, hood down, red hair pulled up in a pony is dipping her cauliflower into the soup, fork in one hand and bread in the other, shovelling down the food like she hasn't seen it in weeks. Dean forces himself to follow her example and wonders what horrors she has seen that makes her look like that. She's at most nine years old, and still has her ugly doll tucked under her arm, alone in this place - even if it is nicer than most.

Hunters shouldn't have kids, he thinks.

The Winchester anniversary passed by unnoticed.

It never meant that much to Sam probably because he doesn't remember their mother.

Dean does, just as a soft warmth at odds with the spunky girl he saw make her pact with Azazel in the past. He remembers just enough to miss her and to understand his father's slavish devotion to both her memory and the son she died for.

He's never felt so alone in his life.

He won't linger on it though, and returns to the food he doesn't want.

 

She sits at his table bringing her own wine, bottle and all. Her hair is long and thin about a skinny face that maintains a sort of girlish prettiness. She's a natural blonde and her expensive cashmere sweater is pleasantly stretched over a small bosom, but her skirt hangs on her hips as if they were a chair.

"You look like you need company." Her voice is a lazy southern drawl. Her too thin wrist slips from the lilac cuff of her sweater. She's too thin and isn't eating, it's made worse by her heavy bangle that bats off the muscle of her thumb as she lifts her wine glass.

The wine is as dark as a bloodstain on her lips.

Dean doesn't bother to answer her.

"Drinking alone is boring," she says, "and misery loves company. You look like you need a drink." She pours wine into his empty water glass, a good inch's worth.

"I won't sleep with you." He says although he's pretty sure that she's a sure thing.

"Honey," she drawls and he knows she calls him honey so she doesn't have to learn his name, "I want someone to drink with and you don't want to be alone. What has that got to do with fucking?" She says the word carefully, enunciating the hard syllables through wax coloured lips in her warm molasses voice. "Besides you stink of angel."

His hand finds the silver letter opener in his belt, cursing that he's left himself this open, that his anger over Sam's betrayal has left him this vulnerable. He's pretty sure that in a fight, one on one, that he could take her, but he's been wrong before. "What are you?"

"Old, honey," she tells him though she couldn't be older than forty, "and I've been around, all I want is someone to drink with, someone who smells of something I lost so I can appreciate my wallowing just that bit more, and besides, honey," she taps her finger against the rim of her glass, "I've just eaten." She brays out a laugh at her private joke, "men today, honey, they think we only want two things, to fuck," again the word is violent in her mouth, "or to feed, and I, honey," she uses the petname as a barrier between them, "I just want to get very, very drunk."

 

When they move to the bar she switches from wine, not to mint juleps as he might have suspected from her being a grande dame in a Truman Capote novel, to bourbon straight, hold the ice.

Dean can't fault her choice and copies her with his usual flirting nonchalance to the bartender.

They don't talk, other than to order more liquor but each other's presence keeps people from the table, no one hits on her which is how she prefers it, and they completely ignore him.

So when the young man in the threadbare jeans comes in Dean doesn't notice him. He ignores the bartender and sits at their table, turning the chair around to sit on it with the back to his stomach, he's wiping at his nose like a junky. "Goin' to get me a soda?" he asks. His hair is dark brown, his eyes black and he looks kind of mediterranean.

"You're always a pain, Horace." The woman tells the boy, "I don't know why you're here."

"I just wanted to see," Horace answers bluntly, "if you're not going to get me a drink can I have yours?" He wipes his nose with the side of his hand, sniffling, "I got a funny taste in my mouth." Then he sticks his tongue out to show her.

She slides the glass over the table, and he lifts it, draining it in one. "I don't like this," he says and then scrapes his teeth over his tongue, "and you've got it too."

"Manner's, Horace," the woman chides. There is a long familiarity between them, suggesting a very long acquaintance, perhaps even a fondness. "I'll suppose you'll want to stay tonight, with me."

The boy beams, he's pretty under the twitching Dean thinks to himself, "can I get some chips too?"

"I guess I'll just take my leave now," Dean tells her, "leave you," he turns to Horace, "with your Mommy."

Horace looks confused. "but Sif's not my Mommy." He says but Dean leaves him to it.

 

Horace is waiting against the Impala the next morning, scuffed converse sneakers and a quilted puffer jacket, a handmade wool cap and an offering of coffee. "You're not supposed to be on your own." The boy says, "and you could give me a ride."

"You could get your head read, kid." Dean says but takes the polystyrene cup, which smells of coffee and without the tang of some strange syrup. It's good coffee too, better than the hotel supplied with breakfast.

"You're not to be alone," the kid, Horace, states again.

"Who says," Dean continues, "your Mommy from the bar." He's not in the mood for this kind of crap. He wants to push the kid out of the way and drive to Bobby's.

"No," Horace says as if explaining things to a small child, "Castiel."

Dean starts wondering what this kid is if he knows about Castiel and can so casually drop his name. "There are things after you, you are not to be alone."

"Then get in," Dean sayts finally, "but no complaining and no eating the candy."

 

It doesn't take long before Dean decides that Horace is in no way dangerous and that he is on acid and not crack as he had previously thought.

He goes from itchy twitchy restlessness to eerie stillness and as Dean presses the gas pedal he grins, and like someone's pet dog, sticks his head out of the window- mouth open and laughing.

Dean has to slow the impala to pull him back inside and the kid sulks even as he starts pulling bits of moth from his teeth. "But I wanna fly," he whines, "Seth said I flew too much," he continues to himself, "and they say poor Horace, and it's like flying," he's petulant, lip out arms crossed. "She made me promise, but I just wanna fly." His fists are clenched and Dean is torn, part of him, the sensible part he reassures himself, says throw the kid out on the highway, but there's part of him that remembers Sam as small and petulant, whining in the back of the car.

Horace sniffs back a sob, wiping at his nose with the flat of his palm. "I jus' wanna fly."

Dean remembers how his dad got past Sam's whining because shouting didn't cut it - Sam in the back and Dean riding shotgun. "Look, kid," he says, "you can put the radio on, you choose."

Horace lights up like a pinball machine on tilt and starts to push buttons randomly. He pulls exaggerated faces at talk radio and physically groans at Britney's pleas to "hit me baby one more time," He eventually settles on a nationwide rock station which is playing Queen as part of an all eighties medley. "I like big music," he announces, "I like the drums, they remind me of home." And with a grin that's remarkably hawkish he starts to squawk along to the Princes of the Universe though he knows perhaps one line in three.

He animatedly moves to stiltskin and a song about perfume and paper bags that Dean doesn't know, battering out the drum beat on his thigh with his fingers, his head matching the rhythm and when it plays REM's "it's the end of the world as we know it" he laughs raucously and crows, "it's your song," and his schadenfreude is so infectious that Dean laughs too.

 

Lunch is a bucket of chicken for each of them, eaten in the car. Horace with his long legs crossed on the passenger seat and the grease and flavouring powder around his mouth and both large cups of soda. "I like the way it fizzles on my tongue," the boy triumphs as if he has just discovered Atlantis.

Then he helps himself to the remains of Dean's bucket, clever teeth picking out what remains of the meat and sucking the bones clean. "I accept your offering," he says happily smacking his lips around a thigh bone. "And Sif was wrong, there was no smackings and whackings of poor Horace's tender head."

Dean grits his teeth. The kid's strange and a little hyper but he doesn't think that the old woman in he bar was right to suggest he might hit him, he's more likely to just throw him out on the side of the road.

And his original pronouncement was right. Dean doesn't want to be alone right now.

The kid's a pleasant distraction, itchy twitchy restlessness and eerie stillness and offkey singing and all.

So when he sees the sign for the ferris wheel he stops and points it out, "you wanna fly?" he asks, "come on, we'll fly."

The amusement park is practically deserted and the dollar entry fee is nothing, the boy's companionship paid for that and more, both sodas and the chicken, but the kid's grin is priceless.


	3. In which Dean begins to suspect just how far his brother has fallen, and just why Castiel doesn’t want him to be alone.

Bobby judges people in two ways, years of acquaintance that he views as the lesser and the reaction of his dogs.

He has three dogs, two mastiffs and a wirehaired terrier that showed up one day, full of disdain and had the mastiffs, both trained war dogs, cowed in moments. She is a foul tempered bitch called Lacey who considers mankind as some kind of personal insult and attacks anything that moves.

So when Dean, whom she tolerates as sort of pack, albeit with territorial pissing on his bag, shows up with a Mediterranean looking boy he is unsurprised when she comes flying out from under the crawlspace. What does catch him off guard, as Dean scrabbles out of the way unto the Impala's hood, is that she jumps around as excitedly as a puppy, yipping and wagging her docked tail, rolling onto her back and showing her throat.

The boy falls to his knees babbling uselessly in a nonsense language scratching her flanks and rubbing her belly as she whimpers in canine ecstasy.

Bobby raises his eyebrow at the display and even Dean is speechless, which is probably even more surprising. "This is Horace," Dean says, "Castiel sent him to look after me." Even he sounds doubtful about how well Horace could hold his own if it came down to it.

Horace stands up with an armful of wriggling, squirming, blissed out terrier who is trying to climb inside him and lick his face off all at the same time. "Animals love me," the boy grins and then scratching under her collar he begins to burble against her in his nonsense language.

"I'll bear that in mind if I'm attacked by domesticated pets, or Lacey," Dean gestures to the terrier.

"The devil himself would run from Lacey," Bobby says bluntly, and Dean suspects that it's true. Lacey would certainly put on a good show; she actually does to passing hawkers.

"There's coffee in the pot," Bobby says, "and you can tell your brother that you're safe and that he can stop calling me," he sounds sardonic more than pissed, "every ten minutes."

Dean checks that Horace is obsessed with the dog before he says, in a low dangerous voice, "He's fucking her, Bobby."

Bobby frowns for a moment, "I'll get something stronger," he says then looks at the boy, "and him?"

"He likes fizzy soda." Dean replies and that is the entire conversation, Bobby doesn't do chick flick moments either.

 

Horace takes a bottle of root beer and refuses to let Lacey go even as the mastiffs, Hypatia and Copernicus, circle him happily. He insists on bringing her into the house, although she's not allowed, and has her on his lap, one hand on her flank as the other holds the glass bottle, resting it against her thigh.

He takes a drink and makes a happy like chirrup and holds it in his mouth where it fizzes against his teeth. When Dean excuses himself to visit the bathroom he comes back to find Bobby listening to Horace's excited retelling of the ferris wheel ride and how it's clear that Dean has become a fixture in his world by the way he says Dean this and Dean that.

Bobby is more patient with Horace than he ever was with either Sam or Dean, because he trusts Lacey's opinion of people far more than he trusts his own.

When the coffee comes it's hot and good, and when the cell rings Bobby looks at the screen before cutting the call.

Perhaps he's as pissed at Sam as Dean is, but Dean finds that hard to believe.

"He'll look for you, you know," Bobby says, offering him the good coffee in a field tin mug.

"I know," Dean is chagrined, "I just need time."

Bobby must understand that because he just shrugs, Dean doesn't know it's because he's not sure what he to say - so he says nothing.

"He's already looking," Horace says then, "I like this house, is it yours?" He kicks out his feet, dislodging Lacey from his knee so she sits beside him. "Lots of books, can I read them?" He stops himself, "Seth says it's not Can I -- it's May I. May I read them? I like books, books are new worlds. Dean, do you like books too?"

"Not as much as you obviously," Dean drawls, "but Bobby's books are special. I've got some comics in the car you can read, kid."

Bobby is amused, it seems Dean is a big brother regardless. "Who's Seth?" He asks.

"Seth's my friend," Horace tells them, "he's not meant to leave me, everyone says I flew too much and that's why I am the way I am but," he breaks off to break wind, a gurgling root beer burp, "there was a girl in N'vada and she liked Seth and Seth liked her, and," he stops to belch again, not bothering to cover his mouth, "he wanted me to see Sif and she said Castiel said you needed tiger stripes."

"Tiger stripes?" Bobby asks, he just beats Dean to it.

"Yeah," Horace says in that I'm explaining things to an idiot tone he seems to have perfected, "in the jungle, Sif said Castiel said Dean needed company with tiger stripes."

"So you have tiger stripes?" Dean asks because that would be something to see.

"No," Horace says, he sounds annoyed now, "I am tiger stripes." He frowns, "Castiel is busy, and kinda scary," he drinks more of the root beer, "no one trusts me anymore, not since I flew, and I wanted to be trusted and I wanted to be tiger stripes."

Bobby laughs, "Kid played you, Dean."

"So Castiel didn't ask you, he asked the woman at the bar, fuck."

"Uh huh," Horace says, proud of them now that they've worked it out. "Castiel's too busy and scary to talk to me," he frowns, his emotions patently transparent on his face. "No one wants to talk to me, I'm just poor Horace," he looks down at the dog with her head on his thigh, "You're going to call Seth now, aren't you, you're going to make him come and get me. Please, Dean, don't call him, he's going to be so pissed at me."

Bobby laughs as Dean starts to anger. He doesn't realize that he's treating the kid the same way that he treats Sam. "We have to call him, we're a long way from Nevada and he's got to be worried."

"You can't stay here, kid," Bobby tells him, "it's not that safe," he turns to Dean, "I'll boil some MREs and we'll call this Seth to come and get you."

The boy looks like he's just discovered his world is ending. "Do you have to?" He asks, "he's mean, he only looks after me because she made him promise."

"Yes," Bobby says and that is that.

 

Military rations always strike Dean as being powdery, like he can taste all the supplements that they've added after they've cooked any nutrients out of them.

Horace tucks into it like he hasn't eaten in months and the chicken he ate in the car less than three hours ago is a very distant memory. "I accept this offering," he says with a mouth full of reconstituted potato. "Can," he stops himself, "may I watch television?"

"I aint got one," Bobby says, "only show I watched was Deadwood and that finished. I downloaded it."

"Not Ghost Hunters International or Ghost Facers or any of that?" Dean is teasing him.

Bobby's expression is answer enough.

When the angel, and it's a particularly extreme example Dean thinks, knocks on the door Horace is doing a headstand in the corner, against the wall, reading with Lacey standing guard, snapping at both Dean and Bobby as they pass.

The angel gives Dean two immediate impressions, one that he is very British, drinking tea - he brought his own tin of loose leaf and his own pot - and very gay.

He's wearing tweed, has fine white hair and Bobby calls him Mr. Azriy and tells Dean that's he's THE book dealer for arcane works and Mr. Azriy practically orgasms over Bobby's collection. Even the dog eared, coffee stained paperback Egyptian Book of the Dead that Horace has acquired from somewhere.

Letting him sit on his head reading just makes life easier so they let him. He barely notices the angel other than with a dull acknowledgement.

"This tea is perfect," the angel sighs happily - he made it himself, "are you sure, Robert, that I can't tempt you? Or you, young Winchester?"

Dean shakes his head.

"Horace doesn't like hot drinks as I recall." the Angel says, and he's clearly an angel, he stinks of old churches and sort of glimmers when caught out of the corner of the eye. "But I am here on a mission. I have business with you, young Dean. I happened to be free for five minutes and in the area on business so when my brother asked me to call in, especially with my acquaintance with dear Robert, I thought I'd just pop in. Of course if anything happened I'd be absolutely useless, why I'm more likely to throw my hands up and shriek." He takes another sip of his tea.

"So you're not at all hardcore?" Dean asks, because the other angels he's met certainly were.

Horace howls with laughter, "He's not hardcore," he says, "not like Castiel or Seth, he's," and he laughs as the angel looks at him fondly, "civil service."

"And thank the silver city that I am," the angel says and Dean starts to notice something underlying and flowery in his scent, it's not unpleasant, but different, and the dusty smell of old books. "Can you simply imagine me at the front line, screaming and waving my hands at some nasty smelling undead revenant. Why it'd be Hell on earth in days." He has a rueful little laugh at himself, "so I do what I can, of course I did my time in the front line, but that was more because I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time than any design of my Father. I practically accidentally saved the world."

Dean wonders exactly how this strange angelic creature managed to save the world, perhaps he talked to the demon where the poor creature killed himself just to make him stop.

"Anti-christs are like weeds," the angel points out, "you no sooner yank one out of the way than another one of the little buggers pops up somewhere else. There's always some demon or another trying to take over hell." He lifts the tea pot and refills his cup, and then a perfect splash of milk that suggests a very long practice. "No offense, of course, intended, Dean, what with this one being your brother and all, but I imagine it's nothing to worry about because after all, when we stop this one he'll be fine, and he's not the first and he certainly won't be the last we've stopped."

It's apparent that this angel is the polar opposite of Castiel who is stern and silent.

"I've been earthbound since forever," the angel admits "helping hunters, supplying books, although it practically pains me to part with them. Is that the Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred? How much would you like for it, of course I'd pay to have it copied, and believe me when I say that money is no object."

Bobby has clearly tuned the angel out, perhaps through long experience, "I'll trade it for an original hand written Prophecies of Agnes Nutter. Of course, for a prophet she's completely reliable, who else would know to sew gunpowder and nails into her skirt long before she was burned at the stake. Saw it coming, mark of a good prophet."

Dean is losing his patience quickly, "Why are you here?" he demands an answer.

Bobby has dozed off and is snoring into his coffee cup. Dean is in no way surprised.

"Oh. Of course, pardon me for wandering off topic, I'm simply useless for these things, why I was just telling," he stops himself at Dean's expression, "I'm passing on a message," he starts fussing about in his pockets. The piece of paper he retrieves has strange markings on it that Dean recognizes as vaguely magical though he doubts that even Bobby could read it. "From Castiel of Dominions," he says, "the boy-king searches for his brother. He is accompanied by the demon. He has summoned hellhounds to aid in the search. Dean Winchester is to be protected. Provide camouflage until further orders appear."

"Fuck," Dean curses.

"Exactly," the angel agrees.

 

The angel, sipping his tea like nothing has changed, is adamant that Sam probably doesn't know that he's summoned the hell hounds. As anti-christs grow in power, sometimes it just leaks out and the hounds of hell are desperately eager to please.

"We could destroy them," the angel continues, "but there'd just be more."

"See," Horace pipes up from his place in the corner, "tiger stripes, I'm tiger stripes."

"As odd as it sounds," the angel assures him, "poor Horace is right," the angel says the name with an odd inflection that can't quite be explained away with his accent. "Of course, my dear," he beams at the boy, still standing on his head, "we won't hold it against you, we know it will probably never happen again."

Horace takes the teasing lightheartedly, sticking his tongue out at the angel before going back to his book.

"Castiel is holding the line, which is his duty as an angel of dominions. He has asked that we take you to Magda at the house of five aspects. I'm to give you this," he throws him a wooden disk about the size of a coaster with a cuneiform design on it, "for the car, you're going to have to leave it." Dean feels the familiar rage in his stomach, but it's inevitable he'd have to leave everything behind, "I am to take you to an appointed meeting place where you'll get a new car and . . ."

"If I leave the car here surely I'll just bring the hellhounds to Bobby."

The angel looks at the disk in Dean's hand, "That's a seal of Metatron," he says, "it took weeks to find the thing. Holed up in Damascus it was, in a junk store, they thought it was a coaster. It will keep them away from collateral damage in the area. It won't hold them back from attacking you, because that's how they think that they'll please your brother, but it'll scare them off the little things, and keep demons out of the house as long as they don't push it too hard. I'm sure dear Robert here can stop them getting too far, especially as it's not him that is their prey."

Dean remembers the hellhounds.

He certainly doesn't like the word prey.

They ripped him into so much meat, and Dean remembers the pain and the smell of blood and shit and the sound of them swallowing and tearing as his intestines explode under their teeth. His hand goes back to the memory of those places as Castiel's handprint blazes hot on his shoulder.

"So he wants you to confuse them," the angel realizes none of this and continues to drink his tea, "with Magda."

"Magda's a meanie," Horace tells him, all seriousness, "she washed my mouth out with soap and chased me out with a broom."

The angel has a beatific smile that he shows to Horace. "I imagine that Seth must be frantic by now."

"I'm safe," Horace argues, "I'm with Dean and Dean took me on a big wheel and let me eat chicken and didn't make me catch it or nuthin, and Bobby let me read his books and play with Lacey and, and Seth is a bully, he won't let me fly."

"I know dear," the angel sounds conciliatory but Dean knows it's a platitude, "but you know why, and she did make you promise."

Horace, still upside down on the carpet, frowns, "I know, angel," he makes the word an insult, "he was in N'vada, we can go by air."

The angel's tone is severe when he says, "Horace."

"On a plane," Horace says as if he's explaining to an idiot or a small child, his careful tone makes Dean question for a moment that Horace is harmless, but he's still a kid standing on his head, reading from a book with illustrations. "She made me promise too."

The angel concedes defeat drinking his tea.

 

Magda lives in a large house, built as an architect's experiment, with five distinct fronts each in a different style laid out in a pentagon. The five fronts each face a different direction and there is a hazelnut tree on the threadbare lawn to the east.

Magda sits on the porch drinking something red. She looks like a hybrid of Augrah from the Dark Crystal and a hand knitted afghan shawl.

She's not alone, Castiel is leaning amongst the various gargoyles on the verandah railing, his trench coat is thrown open and the old lady, who not only waddles, but can stand no higher than his waist is thrusting something in his face that is making the angel back away.

Dean climbs out of the piece of shit car he took from Bobby's, a miscellaneous Honda with the back seat missing. It might have been blue but is now rust brown and just closing the door leaves an iron oxide stain on his hands.

The old lady, Magda, is waving a long piece of chartreuse knitting at the angel and Castiel looks physically relieved when he sees Dean. The woman's voice has a forty-a-day gravel to it, and the tassels of her afghan shimmy around a pair of hand knit socks and cheap plastic flip flops. "You must be Dean," she says, "you can explain to this one here that it doesn't matter to me if he's fighting a holy war on three fronts, it's November, and he's going to take the damn scarf."

Dean in that moment realizes that there are creatures in this world who can cow an angel of the lord, because Castiel bends down to let her wrap the scarf around his neck, she ties it loosely. "Just your color," she says proudly, "don't you think?"

It's a rather nasty puke green and Castiel just nods blankly. "Great and honored Magda," Castiel says in his soft cream and broken glass voice, "can you leave us to talk?"

Magda looks Dean up and down, she only has one eye but she makes it count. "I have things around the house that need doing," she tells him, "but I'll go put the coffee on, make sure you get him in before dark. No shoes in the house and get that piece of shit car off my land in case people start thinking I'm running some kinda junkyard and start leaving old couches here. Like I don't already have problems with brownies."

Castiel jumps down, "We'll talk in the car," he says and it's clear that he wants to add Ma'am because whoever she is Magda is certainly fearsome.

Castiel looks relieved when he closes the car door. "Magda is very powerful," he says, "much more than she seems. This is the house of five aspects." He says the name carefully, and Dean remembers that so did the other angel who didn't introduce himself. "It is built on the confluence of five ley lines in a shape of power using many aspects of sacred geometry." He looks at it from the car, it looks a little mad to Dean. "I have asked Ezraqueel of Thrones to watch your brother. The forces of hell are eager to please him, even against his will. This house will serve as a shield and Magda as your sword, to at least give you enough time to find another, more secure, refuge."

"Why can't you watch me?" Dean realizes he's whining but it's been a real rough couple of days.

Castiel leans forward and presses his finger to Dean's lips, the pad resting perfectly in the philtrum, "before you were born I chose you," Castiel says and he is intent, fixed, "and this is where I touched you in your mother's womb and said, hush, I am with you."

It's amazingly soothing, and Dean almost visibly softens against the touch. The intimacy calms him.

"Even as I fight, Dean" he says and he has voice like gravel in velvet that Dean could drown in happily, "I am with you, and you have a destiny, entwined with mine like two lovers, I will do all that I can, with everyone I know, to keep you safe. Then when Lilith is undone I shall give you back your brother."

Dean wants to throw his arms about the angel, to bury his nose in the crook of the angel's neck and just breathe him in but that would be a chick flick moment and Dean doesn't do those.

Castiel is offering the reassurances that Dean needs to hear, and Dean believes him because Castiel is an angel, because Castiel dragged him out of hell, and because Castiel touched him in his mother's womb and reassured him that he would be safe, and that he would be there.


	4. In which discovers you don’t have to be big and bad to be terrifying in the house of Five Aspects

Dean quickly comes to suspect that Magda is looking at him as a fit young slave that she can work into the ground with a series of household chores. In fact, the opposite is true. She only gives him those tasks that she cannot do herself.

So Dean finds himself in a brisk November wind, in the late morning, wedged between something called a cupola and lead flashing cleaning out the guttering and fixing the chicken wire mesh laid over it. There is no way that the old woman, waist high and as wide as she is tall, could make it up here, but it's clear that she'd worked out the best way to do it.

The House of Five Aspects is a warren. It twists five beautiful, unique, houses together awkwardly and there are places where he has to climb staircases to descend, cross rooms to reach hallways, and descend ladders to reach parts of the house. Magda has laid very few rooms off bounds, and he honors that.

She's put him in the gothic part of the house, where the wind wails like a crying woman, and there is a gargoyle in the corner of his bedroom that he's draped his jacket over. She works him hard, at simple chores that need height or strength, but works herself harder and is patient with him, as if she is treating him with kid gloves.

She makes sure that he washes his hands before he eats.

He imagines that it's like having a grandmother, and it's not all good.

He climbs down the ladder, and takes off the winter coat she is lending him that makes him feel like Paddington bear but is warm and flexible and hangs it by the door. Then he takes off the gum boots she has put aside for his use, and washes his hands in the mud sink.

In the kitchen she's pulling a large tray of freshly baked pastries from the oven, "Just in time," she says moving them off with offs and burnt fingers to the rack to cool, "lunch is just ready, and our soaps will be on in five minutes."

He's been here less than a week and he's already become as hopelessly addicted to the Korean soap operas as Magda is.

He's wearing hand knit socks and a handmade sweater with a scarf she has made just for him, and it's wound tight and loving around his neck. "I'm old," she says when he protests, "I feel the cold, even if it's in someone else."

She's a crack shot with a variety of weapons and has different eye patches for each day of the week.

Dean alternately adores and is terrified of her. It's with good reason.

She sits on a pile of cushions on an overstuffed chair, making grumbly nonsense old lady noises, her plate in one hand and a cup of hot milk in the other. When she is settled, she puts them on the tv tray beside her, laying another afghan over her knee, and wriggles herself into position, then breaks wind, loud and long and usually truly foul, before she takes one of the pastries, plaited and full of meat, to bite into. Hot milk steaming in a kitten cup beside her.

Magda says that the very old get to do things like that, and she takes every privilege she can, like breaking wind in public and bullying angels into accepting ugly winter knit wear.

She also makes Dean drive her into town in his piece of shit Honda and go into Joann's for her, to buy wool whilst she hits the liquor store - won't sell to you, Dean, you're just a baby. He has found himself standing at the bead display wondering if ball or bugle beads would make better ammo, because that's what she uses them for. Their late afternoons are often spent on the veranda taking pot shots at the brownies that infest her garden with custom-made sling shots.

Dean only joins in on the third day, when he wakes up to find himself an inadvertent casualty of war when the stringy little sons of bitches smear every clean piece of clothing he's got with horse shit.

South Korea easily has the best soap operas and Magda has a satellite dish, somewhere on the maze of rooftops of the house, but pretty much all she watches are Asian horror flicks and South Korean soap operas.

Its been a long time since Dean watched a horror movie that actually scared him, it took three hours for Magda to find it.

Now she's eating loudly, mouth open, and drinking hot milk with a little something added for luck, and Dean doesn't care because Lee Na-young is considering cheating on her boyfriend, but it doesn't matter because he's a total flake and is having an online relationship with a man that calls himself Rachel and is a communist spy.

It has been a week and it already feels like home.

He knows that Magda has secrets, but that's okay because Dean does too.

It's comfortable and convenient and safe and Dean thinks he could stay here forever, and Magda is happy to have someone to take care of.

"Ever think about gettin married?" Magda asks and it's just a question, a conversation opening, and it doesn't really mean anything. "A handsome boy like you, you're probably beating the ladies off with a spiked stick, think that there's a slew of little Dean Winchester's about? Nosy old ladies want to know."

He immediately thinks of Ben, whose mother reassures him is just a coincidence, but fruit does not fall far from the tree.

"Hunters shouldn't have kids," he says and he means it. John didn't make it easy to be a hunter's brat and he thinks of the girl in the Hotel Dusk, looking haunted and lost and furious on the stairs.

He remembers sleeping in the car.

He remembers an infinite number of faceless, nameless, no tell motels with the walls banging next door and the TV turned up loud and hoping Sammy wouldn't ask again what they were doing.

He remembers being left with Bobby or Pastor Jim and watching the Impala drive away, again and again and again.

He half, almost, nearly remembers a shouting match between Bobby and John - that it might be best if the boys stayed with him, in one place, at one school, Dean should be in school and Sam would be old enough soon. It wasn't like he wouldn't train and protect them. It wasn't like they wouldn't know about hunting but they'd be safer, and could finally kick that cold if they got to see a regular doctor.

Dean is sure he doesn't really remember that, he certainly couldn't have been more than five or six, but in this house, with Magda, he remembers. He wonders why John didn't leave them there, but he kept them close enough to leave behind instead.

This house has power, both Magda and Castiel told him that, but this is the first time he starts to believe it.

"Do you have kids?" He asks, he needs to defuse this, to get rid of it, and he wonders then when the tip of his finger found the crease of skin above his lips.

"Hell no. Sniveling snot faced shitty things. I'd rather have brownies." That's something, Magda really hates the brownies. She has gotten herself in to a land-war with the over the vegetable patch. "You squeeze the little bastards out and then they take, take, and take some more before declaring you never really cared anyway."

"Sounds like you had a few yourself." Dean agrees. Sam was his baby and Sam took and took and took and the only thing he gave back was betrayal and hurt.

They are silent for a while, Dean finishes his hot milk, constantly surprised by how filling it is.

"Besides," she says, "someone's gotta keep this place," and she scratches at her eye patch, where it meets her cheek, "that's a full time job." On the screen a girl Dean thinks is called Prin-key, but isn't going to swear to it, is spraying herself with perfume from an atomizer in a way that's meant to be sexy. It is rather comic actually. "And they make it hard to explain the change." She says that like she thinks he knows what it means because he has met angels and hunted creatures. He doesn't.

The show's patriarch, who Magda has called Kim Jong Il, though Dean's sure that isn't his name - it's hard to tell the subtitles truly suck - is meeting Prin-Key (Pinky maybe) for dinner but she thinks she's meeting her lover and there will be explosions and tirades and another excuse for Prin-key to pout and cry. She cries very prettily after all.

"I did think about it once," she admits, "but it was a very long time ago, and things changed. Now I have this house instead." She doesn't sound at all regretful, in fact she sounds a little glad. "I like this house," she tells him, "it makes haunted house movies plausible."

Dean laughs. The house is both magnificent and mad, twisted up and dumped in the middle of nowhere. "I imagine The Haunting is a hoot."

Her laugh is like dry leaves crackling underfoot, rattling with phlegm and genuine amusement. "I used to open the house at Halloween for the local brats, before I got so old. God, jumping out of the bushes at them never got old."

"How old are you?" he asks.

Magda's grin looks like the blade of a scythe, sharp and dark, "Old enough to know that handsome young men don't ask a lady's age. Look at that," she turned to the screen, "of course he's going to find out that she has double booked him," and that's how she deflects the conversation away from anything important.

 

"In my day," she laughs later, when the show is finished and she's knitting, "one of my days," there's another laugh, "hunters were great big burly men, they'd have taken one look at you and expected you to bring them beer." She grins at her knitting; a tube on four needles she says will be a sock. "Or they'd have thrown you over their shoulders to sodomize you within an inch of your virtue, a pretty boy like you, so," and with this she leers, "are you and that gorgeous angel of yours making the beast with two backs yet?"

Coffee goes everywhere.

Dean's certain she waited until he took a mouthful before she said it, her one eye is twinkling with mischief. "He's an angel!" he protests, "It's blasphemy!"

"He's a hunk of steaming man meat," she corrects him, moving the knitting around as she finishes the work on one needle, taking that one to work the next, "it'd be blasphemy not to."

"Maybe I don't kiss and tell." Dean argued.

"I hope he's working on scratching the itch, I didn't put you half way across the house because I thought you could do with the walk to the kitchen. Hell if Castiel was mine I'd scratch the itch until my hips gave out."

Dean chokes on this mouthful before he puts the coffee down as a lost cause.

"I'm old," she tells him, "not dead, but you got one of those old stick up the ass Dominion angels, you'd have been better with Principalities, they're more open," she leers again, "in all the good places."

"Just sit and knit," Dean says, finally managing to swallow but he still thinks he might die of embarrassment, you don't have these kinds of conversations with women as old as Magda. "Leave the loving to those that still have their own hips."

"Maybe I wore them out with one of those boys from Principalities." Her grin is vicious and dirty.

"Or maybe you were picking fights with the brownies," he answers, "or going up all the stairs in this house to get to the basement."

She laughs again, like this is the most fun she's had in years. "I heard a joke from one of the Virtues. So there's an angel of Principalities and an angel of Dominions walking along when the Principality sees his lover picking flowers, 'Oh no,' he says, 'I hate it when he gets me flowers, he always expects me to lie on my back for a week with my legs in the air.' 'Why? asks Dominions, don't you own a vase?'"

Ladies that look like Magda aren't supposed to know jokes like that and they certainly aren't supposed to know them about angels. He gives up entirely on the coffee.

"This one's good too," she admits, "a Christian martyr in ancient Rome is thrown to the lions in the coliseum. Seeing the animal circling he falls to his knees and prays to God for deliverance." She sniggers to herself starting to turn the heel on the bright blue sock, she gets ugly wool that's left over because it's cheap. She knits enough that she needs to make savings when she can.

"The Christian thinks his prayers have been answered when the lion falls down beside him and starts to pray," Dean hasn't heard this one before and he kind of wants to hear the punch line but the last one was completely inappropriate for an old lady, especially one knitting. "I don't know about you, the lion says, but I'm saying grace."

These are little blasphemies and Dean laughs despite himself, though he suspects that Sam, the holy Joe of the Winchesters, would be horrified. He wants to see how Castiel would react. Castiel doesn't even let him take God's name in vain.

"I've got one about Christ on the cross that's just a hoot." She says.

Castiel is firm and good and stern and yet Dean has made him laugh.

But Dean doesn't have thoughts like Magda is suggesting about him.

Since he came back Dean hasn't really had thoughts like that about anyone.

He's gone through the motions though.

"You can't tell me," Magda pushes, "that you've not had an impure thought or two about him. Especially in that new vessel of his," she sucks her breath through her teeth, "he'd be gorgeous without Castiel, you know. Angels of Dominions are always so direct," she lowers the circle of needles to leer at him again, "of course, that has its advantages too."

Dean decides that discretion is the better part of valor and flees, making sure to lift his dirty dishes because she's got him house trained.

\----------------------------------

Brownies look basically human, if humans were chocolate colored and perhaps the size of a skipper doll. They are bald, naked and their jaws literally hinge open to reveal a perfect circle of sharp little piranha teeth.

Despite looking rather fearsome, they aren't in any way dangerous. They are tricksy and they are thieves but they live on insects and wild fruit, not meat.

If anyone died because of a brownie infestation it's because they fell down into a nest and broke their neck.

Dean stands on the gothic verandah and watches them. They are watching him back, climbing over each other to get a better view of the house, chattering mischief amongst themselves and staring at him with beady black eyes.

"In some cultures," Castiel says from behind him. Dean hadn't noticed his appearance, he only notices when he's gone, "they eat them, they are said to be very nutritious."

"Wouldn't they get stuck in your teeth?" Dean answers, "I mean they're stringy and there's not that much meat on them."

Castiel steps forward so that he is almost beside Dean, warm and Christmas smelling. He's still wearing the puke green scarf which is knit in a square pattern - there is a different design in every square. Unlike the one she produced for Dean it doesn't have tassels. "Most people would be horrified."

"If there's a chance it can be eaten," Dean says with a shrug, "I'm a soldier at heart, you eat what you can, not what you want. You can't afford to be choosy." He shrugs, rolling his shoulders, perhaps gaining millimeters in the space between them. "I've probably paid to eat worse."

"There was a hunter I knew," Castiel knew, "when the world was younger, newer, he loved to eat brownies. He would make them into a stew, he said that it had magical properties, made him quicker, stronger, better."

"Did it?"

Castiel is blunt. "No."

"And what happened to him?" Dean presses, Castiel rarely talks about anything but the mission and even then his words are very carefully chosen.

Castiel counters him with a question. "What happens to all hunters, eventually?"

Dean knows that answer.

"Don't let Magda tease you so," Castiel tells him, she means nothing by it, Dean knows, "she is not harmless but she appears to like you."

"How can you tell?" Dean asks, the woman is a complete mystery to him.

"She is knitting for you, look at this," he turns Dean to face him completely, ass against the railing and lifts the hem of his sweater, his fingers underneath it and marks out the stitching, "protection," in another place, a little higher he rubs over them with his thumb, "health."

Castiel pulls the sweater more so that the back of his hand is over Dean's heart. Dean's feels it stutter in his chest and the angelic hickey on his shoulder blazes. He can feel the blood run south and his mouth run dry. "This motif is happiness, she knits them into clothes so no one else suspects that she offers power."

His hand is still under Dean's sweater, against the thin cheap tee, and his face is almost against Dean's, turned up because Dean is slightly taller. Dean is acutely aware of the November chill against the angel's warmth. He can smell the angel's breath, sweet and faintly spicy.

It would take less than a thought to seal the gap between them.

"It is," his breath is washing over Dean's face, tropical and cinnamon sweetened, "the least of her powers, yet perhaps the most," he's close enough that Dean can almost taste his words, and the shape of his lips as he makes them, "intimate."

Dean defuses the moment by jerking back but there's not much room, there's nowhere to go but over the railing and that's too far. Knitwear or not, you don't get intimate with an angel of the lord. "She said she was going to knit me a pair of underwear."

Castiel's laugh is like fat rain clouds rolling across a blue Kansas sky. Dean can experience it with a sense of wonder, sharpened by Hell. It is all the better for being honest.

"Now I'm going to say no with more reasons than that scratchy wool she has," he turns so he doesn't have to look at the angel's mouth and the angel is behind and beside him, "who knows what magic she'll weave into it," he frowns, "she'll have me humping the leg of every supernatural son of a bitch that passes this way so she can laugh."

"She wouldn't do that," Castiel reassures him, "of all the things that she is, and she is many things, she is not cruel." His hand finds its way, perhaps of its own accord, to the mark on his arm, holding him in place and the heat blazes through Dean like twister clouds over that same flat Kansas sky and Dean wants to turn into those arms, strong and firm, and for it all to go away because Castiel is there.

He doesn't move.

"She is ancient," Castiel continues, "but not wicked or malevolent or vicious, or we would have torn her down long ago." Dean looks at the angel's hand on his shoulder, capable and strong with nails like glass. "We are soldiers, Dean, you and I, but," his chest is against Dean's back and Dean is taller than him so Castiel's mouth is at the line of his jaw. His lips are practically mouthing Dean's earlobe, "this world needs things like Magda, for the calm between battles so that we may," involuntarily Dean licks his lips, "lie down," Dean could turn his head and take what Castiel seems to be offering, instead he just closes his eyes, "and rest. It is," Dean can feel flecks of spittle from explosive consonants against his jaw, his ear, his cheek, "the will of our Father, Dean, that we might," Castiel's voice is soft and razor fond, "find such moments of peace amidst the bloodshed."

Dean does his best to focus on the malevolent mischievous brownies as they pull faces and rude expressions at him, and the angel, but Dean can't concentrate. "This world was not created to be a battlefield." Castiel is there and Castiel is hot and Dean wants to tug on the front of his jeans to release some of the pressure and the rail is digging into his stomach and the brownies are suggesting all manner of things, "So for every creature that must be hunted there is another that must be cherished."

"As you are cherished," Castiel tells him, his soft voice a breath against Dean's ear like the broad sweep of a tongue, "as you are loved."

That word is impetus enough for Dean to break free of the angel's loose grip, to step to the side out of immediate reach.

Love isn't a word he allows in his vocabulary. Love is for other people that aren't hunters or so very spectacularly fucked up.

The handprint on his shoulder blazes white hot for a moment and Castiel takes a step back too, and the sudden absence and gaping hole between them is filled with a back draft of chilled November sunshine. "You are loved, Dean Winchester. Many a God, an angel and demon has an interest in your progress. Hunters are rare in these times." Dean braces himself for the insult that will separate them and put them back in terms of disdain and command, where they're comfortable. "You are unique and I am with you."


	5. In which Dean discovers that they are not alone in the House of Five Aspects and that surprisingly loud things can lurk in quiet places.

It's when Dean is cleaning mud from the side of the house, a new prank from the brownies, that he first sees her; a shadow at one of the downstairs windows that clearly moves of its own accord, away from the light.

It's too tall to be Magda

He drops the hose, leaving it running, and takes the silver letter opener from his boot and goes into the house.

He doesn't take his shoes off.

Magda's in the kitchen and seems shocked when Dean comes in, presses a finger to his lips to tell her to be silent, and then gestures with two fingers in front of and then away from his eyes. "There's something in the house," he whispers while moving into the house proper.

It's hard to find the corresponding window, the house has twists and turns and doubles back on itself. He never lets his guard down though, counting the doors so that when he finds the right one he kicks it in.

There is a woman sitting at a vanity with very long, very black hair that she's brushing out. She sees him and throws the hairbrush, a powder compact and a fluffy slipper whilst screaming at him to, "Get the feck out!"

"Oh that's just Bridhe," Magda says from behind him, "I thought it was something dangerous."

"I told you to get the feck out," the woman, who Magda calls Bridhe, continues and then she shoulder rushes him and tries to close the door but it's still off its hinges. "Feckin hunters, never leaving well enough alone." She has an Irish accent thick enough to walk on but it's quickly spoken and nasal, rather than the sing song he expects. "Have to feckin investigate, don't they, I told you," she starts waving a white finger at Magda, "to tell that damn angel to feck off, so I did, but you don't listen, you always know best because you're the mighty Magda."

Magda spreads her hands but says nothing.

"What the fuck?" Dean snaps. "I thought you were . . ." he looks around, "what the fuck is going on?"

"Dean, Bridhe. Bridhe, Dean," Magda gestures between them, "I'll vouch for Dean, Bridhe. Dean, Bridhe is okay, she lives here." She appears greatly amused by the whole affair. Bridhe is standing in the doorway wearing a knitted shell colored negligee, proof that Magda knows her, with a scowl that should cure paint.

The woman is beautiful, tiny and bird bright with brilliantine blue eyes, ruddy lips but there is a soured milk whiteness to her skin. She has small pomegranate shaped breasts and hips designed for a lover's hand, small and sharp, but she has an expression that should strip the meat from his bones.

He looks anyway.

"If you want to look, take a picture," she snaps, "and fix my feckin door. Bloody eejit hunters, I said he'd be trouble, so I did, I told you, Margie, I said he'll be into everything and look, he's into fecking everything."

Bridhe might be pleasant on the eyes but she's certainly not on the ears. She has a mouth like a trucker with touretes Dean thinks. He doesn't say it though.

Magda is finding the whole thing hilarious, having given up on trying not to laugh. Dean doesn't know where to look, because Bridhe has a lot to naked flesh on display in her knitted negligee, and Magda is howling with laughter because the whole thing is just ridiculous, and perhaps Bridhe doesn't know how close she came to being hunted.

If Dean wasn't caught in the crossfire with a wooden three panel door hanging by a prayer in front of him, a small Irish woman cursing him with language he balks at and Magda bent over wheezing with laughter, he'd laugh too.

Every time Magda stops laughing, she takes a deep breath and just starts up again. Bridhe doesn't have the patience for this. "Feckin developers," she starts again, "fecking original Antrim stone floors," the room does have a rather striking flagstone floor Dean notices now, "fecking house, fecking hunters and fecking cold."

Her room is nice, Dean sees, it has a wide bed with a pink lacy coverlet, there are two chairs beside a small table, but also a vanity and behind a screen full bathroom facilities. There's even a kettle.

The room is a cell, a nice cell, but a prison cell nonetheless.

"Fecking hunters breaking my fecking door and letting the fecking cold in. Didn't you tell him, Margie, how I feel the cold?"

That is Deans' first meeting with Bridhe, the Baion Sidhe, trapped in the sun room of the Antebellum part of the House of the Five Aspects.

The whole encounter takes less than five minutes, which is good, or Magda might have died from lack of breath.

\---------------------

Dean has decided that he's furious by the time they get back to the kitchen, and Magda is wiping tears from her one eye and wheezing, hand pressed against her ribs, other using her cane to upright herself. She has to use a library step to climb up to the barstool at the kitchen table. Dean pours himself a coffee. "So," he begins, "there is another woman living in the house."

"No, she's Baion Sidhe, she's trapped here," Magda says and holds her hand out for the cup. He gives her the one he's holding and takes an empty cup from the sideboard.

"You have a banshee in the bathroom," he says surprised at how calm that he sounds, "is there anything else I need to know about, like vampires on the veranda, leprechauns in the laundry, pixies in the parlor?"

Magda's laugh is a down and dirty cackle, "I got brownies in the back forty," she laughs again at Dean's answering frown. "Bridhe is stuck in there by iron and old magic, they trapped her in the stone and then used the stone to make the floor in there. She's just one of the magics in the house."

Dean suspects that it's not the whole truth, but Magda keeps secrets. She drains her coffee and slaps the cup down on the counter with a lusty sigh, "She's easier to keep than a burglar alarm, and even the brownies stay clear of her."

"She doesn't look like much," Dean admits ruefully, in his lifetime he's seen his fair share of supernatural creatures and he'd more inclined to help Bridhe than hunt her.

"Neither do I," Magda tells him with that same dirty laugh. "Anything vaguely demonic, or selling something, and she'll send up a scream."

"Of feck off," he imitates the banshee's accent.

"It'll be good and loud though, plenty of warning, same thing happened when some local boys tried to make off with her DVD player." She looks smug before holding out the cup for a refill. He pours her more coffee. She has him well trained after all. "Besides it just means we can go back to playing cards at night instead of watching Lost."

Dean should have suspected that she had something else to do with her evenings than watch Lost or repeats of Scrubs because the satellite remote a daunted her a little.

\----------------------------------

 

The House of Five Aspects is a short drive from a small town just big enough to have a general store. An hour out finds you at one of those big out of town strip malls with a Wal-Mart and other nationwide brands. It's a pleasant drive through New York State.

They get most of what they need in town, but sometimes the longer run is necessary. Magda doesn't like driving so she makes Dean do it - with the radio off. "Just listen to my baby purr," she says.

Her baby is about ready to collect its retirement check and should have been scrapped in the first fuel crisis, but it runs alright and that's all Magda wants of it.

The local general store has everything you could want in the case of alien, zombie or communist invasions. The storeowner is a survivalist nut, discharged from the army, that wouldn't survive a day if an invasion really happened. Still, there is plenty of bottled water and prepackaged food available. All of it is long lasting, nutritional and about as edible as cardboard.

Dean has been in places like this before. They make their profit on newspapers and milk. Magda waddles into the store, leaning more heavily on her cane than she does normally, making sure that she looks just that little bit more decrepit than she really is. She has a rust colored afghan over her shoulder, her grey hair is frizzier than normal, and she suddenly seems very old and very incapable. "My usual, Norman," she tells the storekeeper, "the boy here can carry it out to the car for me."

"You went and get yourself one of those toy boys, Magda," the storekeeper, Norman, asks her, "one of those Filipino mail order businesses?"

Dean considers beheading the man with one of the shovels beside the counter. It would be quick and relatively painless.

"Norman," Magda says as if she's a little offended, "this is my great nephew Dean from the city. Got himself into some mischief so his mama sent him to me for straightening out, right Dean?" Dean mumbles an answer that might be assent, or a threat of death. "He's been a real godsend, these old bones not being what they used to be. That old house is starting to get away from me."

"You have any problems," the man says ringing up the purchases he has gathered for her and putting them into two large paper bags, "you tell me now, and me and young Jimmy'll be up there in a flash with hammer and nails and do what he can." He weighs Dean with a glance. "A woman of the world like you shouldn't be living in that big old house alone, so you keep this nephew, not like that flaky niece of yours."

"Pah," Magda snorts, "my age, I'm not ninety yet, and if you were only ten years older, Norman, I'd be giving your wife a run for her money. Good men are hard to find, they're all whippersnappers like you, now throw in a bottle of Jensen's finest local brew and Dean, you'll be paying the man."

As Dean goes for his wallet, she continues, "sometimes I think the boy is not quite right, but he knows his way around with hammer and nails, but he's fixed that leak I've had since last spring without a word of complaint and he makes a fine figure of a man in that sweater I made. Why he might even catch himself a wife. Is your Lori still looking?"

"Lori will be looking come hell on earth," Norman assures her, "girl's standards are too high. I tell her she'll just have to settle, but she's getting herself an education and thinks she knows better than her old man."

"Aint that the truth." Magda agrees as he shuts the cash register drawer with a kerching sound. "We'll, I'll be off home, these old bones can't take the pot holes on main road like they used to."

"I'll mention it to Cody Tyler at the next town meeting, you don't worry about nothing, Magda, just you keep knitting those bonnets for the babies. I don't know what the hospital would do without you."

Outside the store, Dean asks her what the hell that was about. Magda lifts her afghan out of the way so it's clear of her feet as she climbs into the car, "People see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear," she sounds incredibly firm as she says it - like it's a universal truth. "It's how we all live in plain sight, all they see is an old lady who lives in a strange house."

Dean can't resist pushing it. "And what should they see?"

"A strange lady who lives in an old house." She tells him with a grin.

\-----------------------------------------------

Bridhe has bothered to dress for cards. She has moved the small table to sit beside the bed because she only has two chairs. She's wearing sprayed on acid washed jeans and purple sweater that falls off one shoulder prettily. She hasn't bothered with a bra. Her feet are bare and she has black toe nail polish. She's sitting cross legged on her bed spread shuffling the deck of cards. "Not enough of us for much," she says throwing her braid over her shoulder where it forms a pool on the bed, "Boy, pour the liquor, Margie, rummy sound okay?"

That is how Dean finds himself drinking moonshine, poured from a jar into cheap bright orange tumblers and half evaporating as it meets the air, and playing cards with a banshee an old woman who certainly should know better.

He wins the first round.

That's when they collectively decide that he knows the rules well enough to stop letting him win.

The frozen M&amp;Ms that they are using to gamble with quickly pile up in a heap before Bridhe, with a small pile for Magda.

There are none in front of him, and Dean's actually borrowed twice from the house.

He drinks the last of the moonshine, his head pleasantly fuzzed, one eye closing and his jaw jutting because it is sour and strong, and he would normally use it to de-ice the screen of the Impala.

He hopes Bobby is taking care of her.

He excuses himself, surprised he's not slurring, and goes to bed.

The gothic bathroom is icy cold, so he pisses quickly and decides to pass on the shower, because there are limits to what he'll suffer, he's not too ripe and it's not like he has to be considerate about sharing a bed. He brushes his teeth, belt left unbuckled, washes his face then runs his palm over his jaw and thinks it's too cold in here for a second shave of the day.

He pads along the wooden floor of the corridor, one hand on the wall, in his knit socks and quickly closes the door to his room behind him, hopefully to keep more of the cold out.

There is a halogen heater in the corner, that he turns on to three bars and wonders, as he does every night, if Magda will let him fuss with the boiler because it obviously needs something. His room is like an icebox.

He gets into the bed before shimmying out of his jeans, dropping them out of the side with as little skin as possible showing under the quilts. Then his tee and his briefs.

The socks stay. He'll toe them off later.

Of all of the heightened experiences he's had since he returned, the one he hates most is the prickle of cold against his skin.

The heater will run for fifteen minutes before it switches itself off, making the room bearable if not toasty warm. The sheets are real linen and so cold they feel wet against his skin. There is the delicious weight of not one but two duck down quilts. There is a draft over his ear that he has futilely tried to plug, and the rough male kiss of his socks as he uses his feet to pull them off.

The only thing he wears is his talisman and his tattoos.

His cock is lying hopefully against his thigh, and with hands firmly under the covers, he starts to scratch, finger tips and bitten nails parting curls held fast with sweat and a day's wear of cotton.

Just going through the motions, but some motions he has got down pat.

A palm over a nipple.

Cold fingers ghosting over his hip.

Lower lip sucked between his teeth.

Drawing it out.

Wanting it more.

In his mind's eye, he pictures Bridhe in her slinky little knit negligee, shell colored against clotted cream skin and the dangling tail of the white ribbon against slightly heavy thighs.

He kisses the insides of her knee on a bed of her black hair and listens to her gasp and whine and feck.

He parts his forefinger and his thumb to rub his palm, rough with gun calluses and knife wear, over his stirring erection.

He's drunk and needy and he tilts his hips to better guide the slip of his palm.

In his head, Bridhe has pink nipples, just a little darker than the wool of her negligee and they contract as he runs his thumb over them.

He feels it in his balls.

His left hand, his knife hand, parts his own thighs.

One leg is raised, with foot flat on the sheet.

In his fantasy, there are strong hands, capable hands on his shoulders and there is a wash of breath over his jaw.

He is thrusting his hips now throwing his fuck up into his hand, and his other hand scuffs the surface of his balls, finding them heavy and tight.

There, in his dream world, in his sex fantasy, there is a hard chest behind him, like there was that day on the veranda.

The other foot scrabbles to find purchase on the sheet, giving him more room to thrust.

He's making grunting noises and the breaths behind him, nutmeg spiced, are rough and deep.

It's so good, almost there, almost . . . just a little more.

The hands on his arms are capable and he knows that blue eyes are watching them and he wants them

to see

to see him

and just a little . . . please . . . oh please . . .

The hands move to his shoulder, to the burned mark of a palm and fingers and thumb, its twin reaches around and touches the space between his nose and his lips.

Dean comes so hard there are tears in his eyes and he has to just lie there and deal because it's too much and the room is spinning without him.

So, he lies there dazed, semen cooling on his chest and thighs, all over the sheet, and fights not to fall straight to sleep, to recover enough so he can wipe away most of the mess with a Kleenex.

As the halogen heater clicks off Dean loses the fight and thinks that he really shouldn't tell Bridhe that he came fantasizing about her.


	6. In which there is beer and a phone call he really shouldn’t have made.

When he's awake Dean is saved from the worst of Hell by sense memory. The memory of pain, by its very nature, fades.

The rest of it he remembers well enough in flashes: quick, sharp, obscene.

The pain waits for him when he sleeps.

It is flawless like the edges of a diamond.

But that night, deep in sex sleep, Dean remembers.

She has the worst kind of beauty; hair as long as Bridhe's holding all the colours of autumn, canary yellow at the front in two streaks like horns. There are ridges on her forehead.

 

She wears an under bust corset of spider silk but the stays are bone, worn on the outside like a mark of honour. Her crotch, legs and breasts are bare.

She is profanely sexual, and hallowed at the same time.

She has taken him from the place of chains and he's spread out like butter on a leather couch. She uses a small blade, worn around her throat in a pendant, to slowly, centimetre by centimetre, separate the dermis from the epidermis.

He knows this because she's told him.

It's a sexual thing for her, which of course makes it worse. The blade is around her neck so she has to climb over him to work, her breasts high and straining, spilling over the stays of her corset so that her tan nipples drag over the skin she's left him.

She selects spots at random on his body, dragging her own skin behind. This is not the first time she's done this.

It will not be the last.

The skin of his face, his hands and his cock and scrotum she takes down to the meat.

Her name is Lys and she is a Lady of this place.

Her brother sometimes also takes him from the place of chains but he just beats him to a pulp for the sounds he makes.

Time is different in Hell - but it still takes a very long time.

Dean is nothing to her - just one of the damned, taken back to factory settings on her command. So he lies, sometimes she leaves him his voice, sometimes not, as she slowly peels the skin from him like an orange.

Sometimes she rides his body first.

She's wet.

This arouses her.

She's rubbing her crotch against Dean's skinless thigh to bring herself off.

If she had left him a tongue she might want him to lick her to orgasm.

His tongue is in a bowl by the bed.

This is not real so there is no blood.

If he had a body, there would be ways out of this. He could pass out; go mad or die under the onslaught.

He has no body, only the memory of one.

She has fisted him before now, wearing a metal glove. He wonders if she will this time.

She peels away a flap of skin, bisecting the nipple. She is squatted over his hips to do so, her wet pubic hair sweeping over him. He can feel her sex, slick and heavy, and then with the flap in both hands she pulls.

Behind her comes one of her lovers. Stretched across the front of his head is the skin of Dean's face, tied tight with sinew at the back. He smiles with Dean's mouth, come to fuck her with Dean's cock.

Dean wakens to fire.

It's only a small fire. It spilled out from the grate onto the rug. He jumps out of bed before he realises that Castiel is there and the angel calmly folds the rug over the flame and puts it in the fireplace before turning to look at Dean.

That's when Dean realises that he has no clothes on.

The angel's gaze is implacable but Dean, who just remembered being skinned, has never felt so very naked.

He knows he's not bad looking. He's young, fit and he's been in the nude in front of people before, but never in front of an angel of the lord, with semen dried and flaking across his stomach, chest and thighs, wearing only that and the talisman Sam gave him.

He pulls his jeans on so quickly he thinks he should catch fire from friction, and does up the buttons of his fly. "Do you do this often?" he snarks.

"You were dreaming of Hell," Castiel tells him as if that is all that matters, not that Dean was just naked, or that he's saved him from a fiery death, although Dean could have sworn he'd used the halogen heater and not the fireplace.

"I do that," Dean replies as if it's the most normal thing in the world.

Inside Dean feels like that demon in hell, like someone's skin is badly stretched over him and it might crease or tear and reveal a wash of something else, something putrid and rotten.

The way that Castiel is looking at him doesn't help.

All of Castiel's gazes baffle Dean. He can't tell one from another. Castiel might be disappointed, baffled, amused or even hungry. Dean can't tell.

He scratches at the flaking semen on his stomach, because it itches as it cracks and breaks from his skin, and Castiel looks at the gesture of strong fingers scratching just above his open fly in the trail of hair. Dean realises what he's doing and shivers under the intensity of those hard blue eyes.

Castiel sees the shudder and pulls off his trench coat, slipping it over Dean's shoulders. Dean starts to protest, but Castiel's hands are warmed marble cool on his chest as he pulls it shut. His breath is balmy and sweetly spiced.

Castiel puts his hands on Dean's shoulders but says nothing, just holding him in that ineffable gaze.

Dean doesn't like the weight of Castiel's eyes. He breaks free of those cool hands and turns around so he doesn't have to see them. "Thanks for the fire," he says, with his back to the angel so he can't see that the angel is perplexed by the statement.

"I'm going back to bed now." Dean continues.

"You will not sleep." From the angel it could be an accusation so Dean considers lying to him, but isn't quite sure that lying to an angel isn't a mortal sin, and it's such a silly little thing. Castiel might even try to comfort him.

"Nah," Dean agrees, "there's some beer in the fridge, wanna share?"

\---------------------------------

Dean's pretty sure that Magda grows, rather than brews, her own beer, because it's the first time in his life he's had to chew it. It's good though, nutty, thick, smooth and it slides down easy.

Magda keeps it in an old glass soda bottle that she has screwed the lid down on tight. He pops it open as Castiel gets the cups from the sideboard. "He must be smiling on me today," Castiel tells him, "to drink the beer of Ein Dor."

"That's only because you haven't tried it yet and decided he's laughing instead." Dean is acutely aware that he's barefoot in Magda's kitchen with open jeans and angel's trench coat drinking beer with said angel. He snarks as a defence mechanism.

"Only one woman alive makes this," Castiel corrects him and then takes a deep lung filling breath of it, "and she doesn't share." A second breath, raising his chest, eyes closed to savour. "If envy were not a cardinal sin then my brothers would be very jealous."

It's a joke, or an attempt at one but Dean doesn't laugh. "Then I get to tell Uriel, because he's a dick."

"Would you be that petty over such a great honour?" He just holds the cup, breathing in through his mouth now so he can taste it before the first mouthful. Dean's already pouring his second.

"It's beer, Cas, just beer."

Castiel tilts his head, like Bobby's terrier Lacey does when she thinks that someone is telling her to do something, baffled at the audacity and generally amused by the whole affair.

"This is how beer was when the world was new," the angel tells him, "this recipe is ancient indeed."

"So's Magda," Dean answers without knowing how true that actually is, "is this beer one of her mysterious magics?"

"No," the angel replies. "It is just beer."

They drain that first bottle, then a second, and Dean is openly disappointed that he can't find a third. Under the sink, however, he finds a jackpot, several jars of plums in brandy, each dated Christmas but the year varies. He's got it on the counter and broken the seal before Castiel can complain - which he does.

"Should we be so free with this food?" The angel is openly wary of Magda, and Dean suspects that it's more for the things that Dean does not know than the fear of brightly coloured knitwear which he understands.

"Yes," Dean's answer is brusque and to the point. He gets a spoon out of the drawer and starts spooning the brandy into his cup, leaving the plums behind.

Castiel goes to say something, but stops himself and holds his cup out.

"Is this one of those quiet times?" Dean asks. Castiel just tilts his head, another of those clearly inhuman gestures that separate them. Sometimes Castiel can pass as human, at other times he's like an alien or a really good simulacrum. He looks human but he's too cool to the touch and he smells wrong - then he moves and what illusion remains is broken. "Is it all quiet on the western front?"

"Where the war is fought there is no direction." Castiel shows no duplicity, another sign of his very inhumanity, he is an angel of the lord. Dean wishes, for just a moment that he could see him as he truly is, to understand him as he truly is. Yet then his eyes would burn out of his head. He thinks sometimes that Castiel would prefer that too, then he wouldn't have to try so hard to pretend to be human and fail.

"That must be a bitch," Dean continues regardless, "like we are after enough of this brandy."

"Does it help you sleep?" the angel presses, "it is just a taste to me." He swirls the smoky coloured brandy in his cup but doesn't drink it.

"A moment on the lips," Dean singsongs, "and yes, if I'm drunk enough I don't dream or I don't remember it, but sometimes it's not enough."

Castiel's gaze is hard but serene. There is nothing of pity in those eyes and Dean doesn't want to consider what it means. If the angel pities him then he can rebel against it, but Castiel doesn't pity him.

"I am with you," the angel says, "I pray that one day it will be enough."

"It's not."

"My prayers will be answered," Castiel tells him and he sounds so sure, "when it is time."

"Don't bother," Dean cuts him off, "I'll survive," because the image of God saving him distresses him greatly. Dean doesn't need God. God has other concerns like world peace and starvation, Dean will survive. He does what he has to do because hard experience has taught him that he can trust no one to deal for him, even angels of god.

He knows Castiel will let him down, even if Castiel doesn't want to, or Castiel expects him to fight in his heavenly war, but he'll let him down. Everyone does eventually.

Everyone does.

His father did.

Even Sam . . .

He carefully doesn't think about it, and reaches out to pluck the cup from Castiel's fingers, ignoring the inadvertent caress of hands touching hands. He empties the cup and looks at the doorway having heard Magda's distinctive approach.

"I'm going to make fresh bread," she says when she comes in and looks at Castiel, "are you staying for breakfast?" Castiel looks to Dean and then nods.

"I'm going to bed now," Dean says, ignoring whatever passes between the old woman and the angel.

Dean shucks off the trench coat when he gets back to his room, folding it over the chair with more care than he treats his own things. The smell of the angel permeates it.

He climbs back into the bed, the sheets cold again but the room is warm. He doesn't take his jeans off. Castiel stands, uncomfortable, in the doorway. "If you take your shoes off you can get in too." Dean tells him and moves to the very far edge of the single bed.

Castiel does not need to be told twice.  
He's suddenly clumsy, bending over and losing his balance in his haste. His fingers turned to rubber at his laces of his bland office shoes. There's a hole in the toe of a black sock, which is a perfect detail. At this moment Castiel is painfully human.

Dean is only in his jeans, the top button undone, and Castiel is wearing his cheap suit, still with his loose tie. When Castiel gets into the bed his face is a thought away from Dean's on the pillow and Dean knows Castiel will leave him - will betray him, but he's here now and that's got to be enough.

He sleeps in a bed that still stinks of sex.

\----------------------

When he wakes up Castiel is sitting, dishevelled, and noticeably panicked in the chair. Dean is immediately worried. "What happened?" he asks fearing he did something in his sleep like dream hump the angel's leg.

"I do not know." Castiel tells him and is genuinely perplexed. "One moment I lay next to you and it was dark, save the fire, and then it was late morning and I do not know what happened."

Dean laughs, loud and long because it's the best joke he's heard in ages. "You fell asleep, dude."

Dean's laughter at first baffles then changes the angel. If Dean could read his expressions he'd probably recognise it as awe. "You humble me, Dean Winchester," he says and because it's Castiel he truly means it. "There is something I'd like to do for you if you would let me."

"It isn't kinky is it? Because, I'll need more liquor." But even Dean's unsure of his usual bravado.

"I would like to wash your feet."

So Dean drawls, kicking his legs, jeans and all out of the bed, "Not kinky at all, then."

"May I?" Castiel asks and Dean suddenly remembers Horace struggling to mind his manners and the angel who sits on the chair, back bent and head bowed, beside his bed. So he agrees.

Castiel fetches a bowl, a towel and some soap, which he lays in front of Dean. Then he goes back to the bathroom for a jug of hot water. Dean takes advantage of his absence to change his jeans for clean briefs. He suspects that this means a lot to Castiel, to even offer, and thinks that pants might get in the way.

Castiel kneels at his feet, in front of the bed, and Dean doesn't want Castiel to do this. He wants to pull him up and push the bowl away but he can't.

Instead, the angel places the towel over his thigh and lifts Dean's foot up unto it.

It is probably the most erotic moment of Dean's life and it's not in any way sexual, but at the same time it's incredibly sexually charged.

Castiel does not linger over his touches. He holds the ankle, lifts it unto his thigh, then he splashes the water, which is nicely hot, onto his skin with his other hand. His fingers are firm, determined, rubbing water and soap into the creases and cracks, the deadened skin of his soles and the sensitive part of his arches. Into the space between his toes and over his toenails.

Castiel is thorough and Dean can't help but stare at the angel at his feet. His head is bowed, his eyes fixed on the task and Dean knows this is a gesture of obeisance; of surrender.

Dean can't take it.

It's too much.

So he attacks.

"Never took you for a foot fetishist," the joke is meant to drive a wedge between them, to push the angel away.

Castiel remains firm.

A bottle of oil appeals and Dean goes to jerk his foot away but the angel has it tight. He uncaps the bottle and puts a few drops on the skin and then rubs them in with solid thumbs. The oil is very faintly scented. "I want to do this," Castiel tells him, his fingers deft on Dean's toes.

Dean has a sick feeling in his stomach, like trapped wind or food poisoning.

"It is tradition that acts of awe are rewarded thusly," the angel tells him, "I am honoured and humbled by you, Dean Winchester. You gave me, without knowing, a great and rare gift. Though it frightened me, with you I slept. Thank you."

"It wasn't me," Dean shrugs away the gesture because this might get personal and he doesn't do that, "it was the brandy." But even as the words come out Dean doesn't believe it and the angel has, in his simple, inhuman way, humbled him.

It leaves a sour taste in Dean's mouth that no amount of brushing seems to shift.  
\------------------------------------

Magda has, true to her word, made fresh bread but serves up instead French toast she made with a loaf of wonderbread dipped in egg and milk and then fried.

It's completely different from any French toast he's ever had before. It is moist and filling, a meal in its own right.

Castiel drinks tea as if nothing has happened. He eats nothing. He just stares at Dean. His eyes are diamond bores.

"Oh, you stayed for breakfast," Magda tells the angel as she climbs up to her stool, "that's chivalry, Dean."

"You've got a dirty mind," Dean replies. "Nothing happened, I slept, he slept."

Magda beams, her one eye shining. "You slept?" She asks the angel as if it's a miracle.

"Yes, most honoured," he tells her, "I slept."

"I'm so happy," Magda is gushing like a teenager at an Usher concert. "So when's the wedding, I need to know what kind of hat to get."

"Most honoured," Castiel answers, "you are mistaken, thank you for your hospitality but I must go."

"Oh the humanity," Magda wails in mock upset, but Castiel is gone between one blink and the next. So she turns to Dean. "You can't do that," she tells him.

"I'm not in the mood." Dean's answer is blunt, staring into his black coffee.

"But mood is a thing for cattle or making love." She intones solemnly, quoting something, he doesn't know what.

"Moo."

Magda doesn't push it. "I need to go to the mall today," she tells him, "do you feel up to the drive?"

"I don't have a choice, do I?" With Castiel gone, driven out by the old woman's teasing the feeling of wrongness, of Hell, has returned.

He feels like a hide stretched across a frame; two continents banging into each other with a sea of lava surging underneath.

Castiel is right. The liquor doesn't help, but what else is there?

\---------------------------------------

Magda goes into a clothes store, handing Dean the bags of wool to carry. "I'm going to sit in the car," he says, "I'll be there if you need me."

He wants to be alone. He wants to lie across the back seat of the Impala and listen to Metallica cover Sabbath loud. Sabbracadabra, would hit the spot right now but this piece of crap Honda can't play music for shit and it doesn't even have a back seat and the Impala is in South Dakota with Bobby.

With Sam.

The great chasm inside him opens just a little wider, the sinews that his skin is stretched across creak under the strain, but they don't break.

He's studiously avoided thinking about anything to do with Sam and Magda makes it easy. When he's with her, family is distant, safe, wrapped in cotton wool.

The worry is instant and paralysing, like a knife to the face. If he wasn't sitting down he'd be doubled over at it - he just gasps.

He just wants to know that Sam's okay.

He's angry and hurt and sure as shit not ready to even think about it, let alone go back, but he just wants to know.

He's at the payphone without thinking about it, something he's good at, dialling the number drilled into him the last time they changed cells.

"Hello," Sam's voice on the other end of the phone is wary but gloriously familiar.

Dean's mouth goes dry. Words evaporate in answer to the voice.

"Dean," the voice continues, "Dean is that you? Are you okay? Are you safe? Tell me where you are and I'll come get you."

Sam sounds frantic. He can hear him clattering about for a piece of a paper to write the address down on. "Sammy," he says and his voice is rough. "I'm fine."

"Dean, please tell me where you are."

Dean doesn't answer that.

"The angels, what have they done to you?"

Dean doesn't answer that either. "I'm your brother, Dean, you need to come back, the angels...." Dean doesn't learn what the angels were going to be accused of because he just drops the handset and walks away because Dean is stretched raw. He can't take any more and Magda is standing next to the blue Honda looking for all the world like she knows just how much it hurts.

"Competition on the radio," he lies, "knew the answer, but didn't get through." She puts her hand on the small of his back and waits for the storm to come.

It doesn't.

Dean doesn't let it.


	7. In which Dean realises just how eager to please that the forces of hell can be

Thanksgiving sneaks up, quicker than expected.

Norman's daughter Lori is just past jail bait and is the kind of pretty that grows into stunning, standing in the kitchen helping Magda with the cooking as Dean peels potatoes. Despite that it's only the two of them, Bridhe not needing to eat, Magda appears to be cooking for the entire french foreign legion.

Lori hums as she makes her mom's sweet potato pie but Dean doesn't recognize the tune. He's contemplating whether he should bother turning on the charm for a girl just past legal.

Lori's clever too, studying anthropology at Hudson, the kind of girl he normally leaves for Sam, but Sam's not here and Magda keeps him on a tight leash.

Besides Lori's a nice girl, destined for more than Mom's sweet potato pie and fig stuffing.

She fills out her sweater nicely, a little more than a handful but not too much. Then she bends over, her jeans tight over a teenage ass, and pulls an apple pie out of the oven and the room smells warmly of sugar and cinnamon and he directs his mind to other things.

The last time he saw Castiel the angel washed his feet. It's a memory that pops up again and again -- at the laundry over the washing machine, in front of the TV, in the bath.

He hasn't gone through the motions since then, either.

But Lori's neck is nice and firm and looks like peach skin.

The potatoes turn in his hands as the knife slips and the sudden splash of blood surprises him, brilliant against the dusky white vegetable in his hand. It's almost embarrassing. He's a hunter, a good one, and he nearly chops his own damn finger off peeling potatoes.

"Dean," Lori cries out, getting a clean towel out of the drawer. She wraps it around his entire hand. "Granny Magda," it's a holler to the part of the house where Magda is pressing napkins. Most of the kids around here call her Granny Magda, it's a suggestion of just how long she has been here in this place. "Dean's cut his finger."

The cut is deep and clearly needs stitches. Dean can tell that from here. It doesn't hurt which surprises him because he thinks that it should hurt like a bitch. It's deep and pulsing, but it's like it is someone else's hand.

"I'm taking him to the emergency room." Lori calls out and then she's ushering him to the door.

Dean doesn't know what's wrong, only that it feels as if he might be a passenger in his own body.

That terrifies him so he struggles, mostly to see if he can. "It's just stitches," Lori assures him, putting her arm around his waist. The girl obviously had a calling as a nurse, but one too many Kathy Reichs novels and she goes into forensic anthropology. "A big man like you has probably had worse."

He laughs. Worse. He wants to pull up his shirt and say, look, here is where I damn near lost an arm to something you've never heard of and I can't pronounce, or what about here where I got five broken ribs running away from a werewolf in North Dakota. Then there's his personal favorite, this is where I was disemboweled by a pack of Hellhounds - using their teeth.

But instead he just appreciates leaning against a very pretty girl with no intention to take advantage of it.

\--------------------------------------------

The emergency room at county is full of burns and other miscellaneous kitchen accidents. Lori is waving her hands at the nurse on the desk whilst Dean sits next to a kid who has a sprained wrist at worse, but looks more like a bad bang that needs nothing but an icepack and over the counter ibuprofen.

The kid is wailing like a stuck pig.

Dean thinks that this whole charade is unnecessary. It's his left hand and he can stitch it himself without half of this bother.

And the kid is like a foghorn in his ear.

Normally, emergency room visits occur because their injuries are worse than field dressings, no matter how good, can deal with. Dean has set bones before now, but the kid's mother is almost as loud as her son and his finger is throbbing, but nothing a few paracetamol or a shot of plum filled brandy won't fix.

He feels bad. Something is wrong.

Maybe it's the smell of the place, antiseptic and death. The worn down efficiency of the nurses, and the bustling bumbling of the doctors in their pastel colored scrubs.

It's the sort of scene waiting to explode into a zombie flick in which Dean would have to save the squalling child and then, the last zombie done in with an IV pole because he's nothing if he's not resourceful, Lori would drape her not quite jail bait loveliness over his leg and the credits would roll.

"But it hurts." The kid beside him wails, "that's bike's evil, it just keeps throwing me."

Dean is just turning to explain that if the bike was truly evil the kid would be sporting much more than just a banged up wrist. The last evil bike related injury Dean heard about, from Bobby when he was nine, was a boy who had a pierced femoral artery and lost a testicle to the handlebars.

Finally, the nurse calls him.

He was right about the stitches. Dean gets three of them, and he's on the verge of apologizing to the male nurse stitching him about putting him through the bother, when he sees Castiel in the hallway behind him.

The sense of wrongness intensifies. He hardly thinks that Castiel would visit him over a small kitchen booboo. When the nurse leaves, the angel comes in, catching Lori as she falls asleep. "The hounds have reached the House of Five Aspects." Castiel is blunt, "leave the girl here," he turns to go, "it was an act of great foresight to bring her here without hurting her, it gets her out of the way of the fighting."

Dean doesn't contradict him. It's best to keep civilians out of the fray even if it was just an accident and fortuitous coincidence. "Where's the car?"

Dean can't quite shake the feeling of being a passenger in his own body as he reaches the piece of shit blue Honda. He's in control of it, but it feels sluggish and somewhat alien.

He has other things to worry about though

Castiel takes the passenger seat; it doesn't surprise Dean that the angel can't drive. So, he starts the car and the radio blares into life, a mess of static and noise.

"Head for the airport," Castiel orders , "you need to leave."

"No," Dean answers with the same terseness, "I'm not going to leave Magda and Bridhe to die."

"They are soldiers," Castiel tells him, "the hounds have no interest in them, let them buy you time."

Dean just steers the parking lot out of the hospital parking lot towards the House of Five aspects. "They helped me," he says because it's enough for him, and floors the pedal making the Honda lurch and wheeze before it picks up speed. "I'm going back." And that's all there is to it.

\-----------------------------------------

The house is lit up like Christmas, fire and small explosions all over the gothic part of the house. There are sirens approaching from the town, but they are still too far away to be of any help.

It's best like that - he can hear the yipping of the Hounds and tries to stop his bowels turning to water.

He stops the car with the handbrake and goes into the house by one of the broken sash windows, his arm over his face to protect him from the worst of the smoke.

Magda is pissed at him.

The old witch is nothing if not resourceful. He finds her waving what appears to be a Roman gladius at the Hounds as she launches into screaming at Dean to leave at the same time.

For the first time, ever, Dean actually sees them. They are backing away from her and snarling at being denied their prey. Judging by the amount of blood on her clothes and sword, as well as at least one Hound corpse, she's proved to them that she's as fierce as they are.

"Get Bridhe, they'll focus on her," Magda tells him, "the fire's worse there." So as Magda holds the Hounds back from him with sheer force of will and a short sword, he sees the first white explosive light that signal Castiel has entered the fight. Dean goes to the banshee.

Bridhe looks subtly different, glorious in the firelight with the outside wall of her room burning. She looks hungry and eager. The Hounds are howling, whining and crying, trying to get to her rather than him.

There is a demon guiding the Hounds, Dean can hear him shouting, "Alive," to remind them and then that cuts off with a blast of white light.

"Get down," Dean shouts and launches himself at the banshee, forcing her to the ground as the wall starts to crumble and explode in on itself.

It feels like great fiery wings explode from his back to shield them as the debris falls unto the carpet leaving smoking craters behind it.

Bridhe rises, throwing him off like a blanket, and halfway across the room. She is utterly changed and he can believe now that she's a supernatural big bad. Her hair is lashing wildly about her. She is wearing leather armor, which she wasn't before, and she looks like someone's fantasy of a pissed off Wonder Woman.

"Thanks for the walls," she says and looks back, there are shadows coalescing about her, like liquid, "cover your ears."

Even with his arms over his head, her scream brings him to the floor. It's like nothing he's ever heard as she continues to transform. She is still tiny and fragile appearing but she looks like she can take on the world and make it kneel. The shadows are forming into dogs, smaller than the Hellhounds but just as vicious. "Do you think, demon, you are the only one that can call dogs. This is the Hunt." Then the dogs attack, she whirls back to Dean every inch a warrior goddess - "Run!"

Dean runs.

He's as scared of Bridhe now as the dogs.

Castiel grabs him in the hallway, tackling him and pushing him against the wall as one of the Hounds tears around the corner. Its chest is easily as big as a beer barrel and its teeth the size of Dean's fingers. Its drool is steaming in the fire and it's lathered with sweat like a horse. Castiel turns, forcing Dean behind him, to attack as a second smaller brindle dog lunges forward and bowls the Hound to its side.

By the time Castiel has pulled a spear out of nowhere the dog is under the Hound and pretty much done for. Castiel has his wings out, great feathered shadows, and he steps forward and plunges his spear clear to the haft into the Hound.

As it dies the Hound rips into the dog, and Dean is patently aware that this dog died to save him and when the Hound falls off, dead, he goes to help it. Castiel pulls him back. "It's the Wild Hunt," he barks out, a soldier's stentorian tone, "it'll drag you into death with it."

The sirens are almost upon them and there are a few last yowls and yips and then the overwhelming sense of wrongness is gone like a burst bubble.

\---------------------------------------------

By firelight, Bridhe is war triumphant in leather bodice and kirtle. Her feet are bare and spattered with mud. There is a smear of blood across her face and neck but it's clearly not hers. When she sees Dean her eyes flash with danger. "I told you to run."

"I'm a hunter." He snarls back, "I'm not going to leave you to die."

"My hunt bled for you, you should have run."

When she sees the dead dog on the ground she makes a little cry in her throat, like breaking glass, and falls to the floor. She lifts its head unto her knee and rocks, babbling to it in her own language. Then Castiel kneels beside her, wings still extant, and takes the knife from Dean's hand. He didn't even know he had it.

Bridhe wastes no time. She opens the dog's chest and snaps open the breastbone. She wipes it's blood over her face and breasts, down her thighs and into her hair. She is anointing herself and she's crying.

She takes a deep breath and composes herself a little, saying what are clearly words of power. From the dog's open ribcage she pulls a small black stone which she puts in her mouth.

She reaches up to her own temple where she pulls out some lashing black hairs at the root.

She looks to Castiel and he nods.

Deft white fingers twist the hairs into a chain that looks like barbed wire. She takes the stone from her mouth and threads it onto the chain, black and matte against the dark colored gold. She collects one of her tears on a fingertip, where it hardens, and it too is woven into the piece of jewelry.

Castiel gives her the very tip of the spear with which he killed the Hound, and then a single golden feather that is clearly his own.

When it's done, and the whole thing takes moments from her appearance to completion she grabs Dean's wrist and clasps the bangle, a torque, around his wrist like a charm bracelet.

"Eoighn sacrificed himself that you live," she says and she's sneering, "until you die he cannot return to the hunt. You are responsible for his death so he will guard you. I have given you his heart, my grief, the instrument which avenged him and the token of one who honored his sacrifice. This is old magic, Dean Winchester, don't waste it."

She stands up, resplendent in blood and clearly otherworldly, golden and glowing in the firelight and her hair is reddish where it was black before. "You broke the wall that held me prisoner with its iron. I give you this," she lets his wrist drop. "Now we're even."

Magda is sitting in front of the fire engine with an oxygen mask taking deep breaths. She waves over at Dean, pulling the mask away long enough to speak. "You shouldn't have come back, you should have gone straight to the airport. We can manage."

Dean wants to say something about the fact that she has a square of medical gauze stuck to her head and is using an oxygen mask to breathe. "And before you say anything I'm fine, just taking advantage of being an old lady for a free high." She looks around, "Tell me you left Lori at the ER."

Dean is suddenly defensive. "I did."

"There's a bag in the Honda," she tells him,, "with documents, money, some other necessities. We planned ahead. Go to the airport, take the first plane and make towards the west coast. Castiel will find you. Don't you worry about me and Bridhe, we're made of strong stuff."

She looks around to see where the firefighter is but they're talking amongst themselves, the worst of the fire extinguished and what's left dying down. "Looks like I can finally have that orangery." She muses. Then she realizes that Dean is still in front of her. "What are you waiting on? Dinner? Go on, go, get out of here."

Dean can see Castiel leaning on the Honda and Dean surprises himself by leaning in to hug the old lady, "Thank you," he tells her, genuinely meaning it, "I'll call you."

She hugs him back, clinging tightly for a moment like a baby monkey. "I'll have to get a phone." Then taking the opportunity she grabs his ass for a good squeeze before she lets him go. Then patting his ass she tells him to go.

\---------------------------------------------

Dean doesn't fly. The last plane that he was on nearly crashed due to demonic interference and the one before that damn near crashed into a mountain before setting down in southwest bugfuck due to a thunderstorm.

He ignores their orders to go to the airport and goes to the bus station instead.

He finds the pack in the trunk, with a few packets of jerky and some plastic bottles of coke zero. The bag opens to reveal a few knitted sweaters, a scarf, a hat, and a pair of fingerless gloves which he tugs out and pulls on. Without the fire and the adrenaline, the cold is starting to seep in and the Honda's heater is shot.

It catches on the torque Bridhe gives him.

The documents are good, better than anything he's seen before. They look truly official and there is a note with them in Magda's blocky square handwriting that reads, "Need more call Pharamond," but there's no number.

If he didn't know better he'd swear that they were real. There's even a matching credit card. It's all in the name Dean Summers.

There is a Blackberry cell phone, clearly just out of the box, preprogrammed with numbers, including Pharamond's, Bobby and surprisingly Magda meaning she was joking about getting a telephone. Sam's number is there too but he doesn't think he'll call it just yet.

There are a few paperbacks, one of those white music sticks that Sam hooked up to the Impala and a handheld game system in a designated pouch with a few cartridges for it. There's also a wooden knife to pass through security with, a pair of bamboo knitting needles and some chemical heating pads.

There is nearly ten thousand dollars in used non sequential twenty-dollar bills.

He understands everything but the needles.

Magda has clearly planned ahead.

Just a few steps from the parking lot to the bus station there's a kid outside looking at the road, pack on his shoulder and clearly planning to hitch. Dean pulls up beside him to ditch the Honda. "Kid," he asks, rolling the window down, "you drive?"

The kid is confused and wary. "Yeah," he answers.

"Want a car, I'm on the next bus and it'll just get scrapped." That's the truth and Dean's willing to let the kid have it for a please but he's not going to tell him that. "You can have her for ten dollars."

"Why?" Modern youth is cynical and this kid's no exception.

"'Sup to you, kid," Dean answers, "she's a piece of shit and the heater's fucked but she's legal and she runs. I'm on my way somewhere warm and the pinks are in the glove compartment. As I said she's a piece of shit and I was just going to leave her. She's better than hitching."

"Why ten dollars?"

Dean grins, turning his charm on full wattage. "Gets me something to eat. It's win-win for you, kid, you interested." And the kid is, it really is the sale of the century even if the car is a piece of shit.

Dean switches the keys for the bill and that's it. The piece of shit Honda is the kid's problem now.

\--------------------------------------------------

At the counter, he gets tickets for the next bus leaving which is for Tucson and costs a handful of Magda's twenty-dollar bills. Burger and coffee in the small diner and then he's boarding, carrying his pack rather than stowing it in the hold. It has maybe two changes of clothes and the rest is stuff to pass the time.

He takes a window seat, passenger side, near the back and roots around in the pack for the music stick that calls itself an iPod and hopes he can get it work well enough to pick up the radio as he waits for the bus to leave.


	8. In which Dean finds himself on the slow bus to Tucson without even an angel to pass the time.

Dean Winchester was not designed for technology.

He can strip most weapons down and rebuild them blindfold.

He can make his own ammo from the strangest things.

He has stripped the Impala's engine, making her work when time wears her down. She is over forty after all.

But the white music stick has him totally baffled.

There is a young girl in the next seat who is killing herself laughing at his attempts to cow the beast. She has one of them too but hers is black and Dean considers swapping because hers clearly works.

She's at most fifteen, her responsible adult in the seat in front of her of her, snoring to wake the damned. Her stuff is crammed into an open backpack with band patches and tippex promises. She has a green stripe in her hair.

He decides to just bite his tongue and ask her for her help, so he turns to her and gives her his best shit-eating grin. "You know how to work these, kid?" He asks. "Mine's a birthday present from someone with a sick sense of humor."

She gets up from her own seat and sits next to him, smelling of warm sandalwood and patchouli because she is that age. "It's real easy," she says, taking the machine from him. She's flirting a little. "Like this," and she starts pushing the big button.

It likes her more than it liked Dean because it does something.

Obviously, the LCD means something to her because it's all gibberish to Dean. "Oh wow, this is really cool. You've got some great music here, Mister, and some books too, look - the whole Lord of the Rings, I bet that just eats memory."

"That's all well and good, kid," Dean answers, "but where do I put the tape?"

She bats him on the arm and he notices that her fingernails are powder blue. She's taking advantage of the thanksgiving holiday to be a little wild. "You're not that old," her attempts at flirtation are clumsy and heavy-handed, but Dean takes as a compliment because it sure as hell aint going to be more than that.

"You put these in your ears and choose the song here," she pushes a button, "then push it again to turn it off." So, after a brief flash of promising drums it goes back to bus noise. "You've got some slamming tracks on here though, look." She presses up against him perhaps a little too much to just show him his track list, but Dean's too uncomfortable to actually look. "It's a pity we can't just link them together so I can steal some of these."

"Look, kid," Dean begins.

"Duffy," she corrects him.

"Duffy," he continues, "It aint gonna happen. I mean first of all we're on this bus for days, your designated grown up is just there, and of all the things I want to be damned for this aint it."

"I know," she leaves a gap for him to give her his name so he does, "the plan, Dean, is that I get to take your photo with my cell so that I can show all the stuck up bitches in school that you were my holiday boyfriend and they'll all go green with envy, because you're gorgeous." Dean laughs and wonders where girls like her were when he was fifteen, probably mooning over older guys he realizes.

She takes his photo with her cell, it's a bright blue thing with all manner of dangling charms. "I love your bracelet," she exclaims grabbing his wrist so she can see it better. "This is so cool," she taps her powder blue nail over the charms, the lump of black stone taken from the dog's heart, the tiny golden feather, the spear tip, the tear and a shining white stone Dean hasn't seen before but assumes Bridhe added when she made it.

"A friend made it for me." Dean tells her. "It's one of a kind."

"Pity, it's gorgeous," she pouts knowing he's not going to just give in and give it to her. He knows that the torque is important, just not why.

She brightens up, "Here you go, Dean," she says, "just push this button to make it play, and thanks Dean."

Dean gives her a new grin, more genuine than the last because she's a good kid. "Thank you, Duffy," he corrects her, "but I still haven't figured out the radio."

Duffy just laughs as if it's a really good joke, chuckling to herself as she goes back to her own seat and her own music player by the window.

Dean pretends that that was it, and pushes the button.

\------------

 

Dean is dreaming.

He is in a great field of fire and there is a path through the flames, so he takes it.

He walks under a set of arches made entirely out of the tusks of great animals.

There is the sound of hands on drums and the very air smells of cinders.

At the end of the path is a large hall made of bones, but there is nothing grotesque about the place, it feels warm and loving.

The doors open as he approaches, made from the fingernails of dead men, bound together with their hair. There is no ominous creak to their movement though Dean expects one.

Inside, the hall is deceptively large.

Fire burns in bowls on stands giving off sweetly scented smoke.

The air is thick with frankincense.

There is a dais at the end of the hall and upon the dais, also made of bone, is a chaise and a mirror.

She rises from the chaise in a sea of fire that swarms around sand colored nakedness and coils around her neck. "You have come to me," and she does not walk as much as glide, "all things of the dead belong to me and I would have your worship."

Even in dreams Dean cannot simply submit. "Look, lady, this is all very impressive but no," he turns to go.

"You would turn your back to me?" Her voice raised an octave and the flames billow with it's force. "Do you know who I am?"

He looks her up and down before finally he says, "Nope, sorry, lady, not a clue."

"I am Ereshkigal, Queen of all things that have died."

"Good for you," he smiles at her, "now I'll just be going."

"You belong to me, hunter, only I can allow people to leave death's sweet embrace, you will give me your worship."

"Look, Queenie," Dean is American and they have never responded well to the demands of authority. "I might put out on the first date, but even I want dinner or a drink first."

"Do not seek to anger me, hunter. My wrath is a terrible thing." She steps forward, her skirt of flames parting to show perfect legs the color of open desert sands. "But my favors are sweet. Worship me, hunter, and I will move the very stars for you." Her hair is slithering around her, shifting from one style to another like liquid ink. Her eyes are dancing licks of fire.

"Flattering, but no," he goes to turn again, but her hand, ice cold and dry, on his arm pulls him back.

"Do you know who I am?" She roars, the very ends of her hair catching flame and twisting about her face like fireflies.

"Yeah," he drawls, "you're Festival," Dean mangles her name, "of dead things, and you can take your David Bowie tight trousers routine and shove it."

The goddess clearly does not know what he means.

"I will give you the world if you will only worship me. A hundred thousand maidens for your every whim. Just says the words, hunter, say 'I worship you.' " She turns around as if there is a noise but he doesn't hear it. "As a sign of my veracity I give you this," she takes his wrist, the one with the torque, and hangs a gem, her token, a red stone, on the twists of gold. "Now wake up."

He wakes up just in time to see the bus crash.

\-------------

The pain is dizzying and there is blood dripping in his eyes from somewhere. His left arm is clearly broken and his leg gored, his pant leg flapping open over his boot. It hurts to breathe. The air is brittle cold.

He can hear whimpering as he tries to shake the impact and pain off him, like a wet dog. It doesn't help.

Duffy is lying in the aisle and there is a long piece of metal pinning her to the side of the seat. Even pain addled and broken Dean can see that it's serious. It's close to her lung, just below her collarbone.

He's moving although he's not quite sure how.

Hands on the wound.

Soothing words. "You're going to be okay, it's all going to be okay, you're a good girl, I'm going to do magic."

Dean's a soldier.

Dean's a field medic.

Because that's what John trained him to be.

He's coping because his training doesn't leave him room for anything else.

He braces for the scream as he pulls the metal out. He thinks it was a window frame. The sudden rush of blood is nauseating but Dean knows what to do.

Stop the blood.

Cover the wound.

Keep her awake.

Deal.

He puts Duffy's hands on the wound, powder blue nails and all. "Hold them there for me, Duffy, you're doing great, you're doing so well." He wedges her bag between his knees and using his one good hand starts rooting around through it.

Girls always carry the best things for this.

The carrier still has a book in it, but it's plastic, so he tips it out, babbling to the kid as she sobs and whimpers and there's so much blood.

A cheap white tee she probably sleeps in.

A box of tampons, open - half of them gone.

He tears open the tampon's wrapper with his teeth, pulling out the end of the applicator. "You need to be brave for me, Duffy, open your eyes and be brave for me. This is going to hurt, but I need to stop the bleeding." She cries out as he lines up the applicator, and then pushes on the end and drives it straight in.

Duffy screams.

The tampon will catch the blood and expand putting pressure on the wound. It's not a perfect fix but it's sterile and it'll have to do. The tee wipes away the worst of the blood so he can see what's happening. The carrier bag, torn between his hand and his teeth is pressed to what's left of the blood to form a makeshift seal.

It's not pretty but it stops the bleeding.

"I need you to be still for me, Duffy, and stay awake, we're going to get out of this and then I'm going to go with you to your school and I'm going to introduce myself as the guy who saved your life, which is much cooler than being a holiday fling, you understand," she nods, "there's my good girl."

Duffy's scarf is on the seat where she was. It's a cheap synthetic thing in a horrid shade of brown. He wraps it around his leg as best he can with one hand.

"Are you cold?" he asks her as the large fat snowflakes start to fall. Wherever they are it's chilly and with the snow it'll just get colder. He takes the scarf from around his neck, the one Magda made him, thick and very long, wrapping it around her neck and bundling her as best he can in his jacket.

"I need you to stay quiet and wait for me," he tells her, "because you're a brave girl and I know you can." She nods.

Her grandfather has a pulse, but he is bleeding from his ear so Dean just closes his eyes and shifts him into something resembling the recovery position so he won't swallow his own tongue.

The driver is gone. There's nothing Dean can do.

A black lady who was sitting up front is clearly hurt, pinned in place, but there's no blood so there is nothing Dean can do. He just tells her that help is on the way, and she's to keep warm and to stay brave, that help is coming. That it has to be.

He's very lucky that it was the slow bus to Arizona on the night before Thanksgiving, so there's only the four of them on the coach. He was sure that more people got on so there must have been a stop when he was asleep.

There are fires dotted about, but the snow is getting heavier, settling against the sides of the bus in drifts.

His head is spinning.

He's trying to think through the pain.

Dean is functioning on training and adrenaline and he knows it. He also knows that when he crashes it aint going to be pretty.

There is no reception on the fancy cell that Magda gave him. He's not really surprised.

"Duffy," he says, pulling his hat down over the girl's head, "I have to go, I have to find help. I have to go get help," he's repeating himself to make sure he's saying the words. "There's another lady on the bus and she's hurt real bad, I have to get help."

A whimpering Duffy agrees. "You look after her, okay, there's my brave girl, and I'll get help." Duffy nods, biting her lip, "good girl," Dean tells her, "there's my beautiful brave girl."

As he walks into the snow, he wonders why the goddess in the hall of fire and bones and nails and hair did this and if he can get away from the Hounds he can hear yipping in the distance.

\---------------

In his head, as he walks through the snow, Dean hates himself for lying to Duffy. He's drawing the bad things away. He has to lead them away. It has nothing to do with Duffy or her grandfather or the black lady at the front, the hounds are for him. He is sure he can hear them.

He can barely see, even if it wasn't snowing so very heavily.

His head is ringing and he has his broken arm up against his chest with his leg dragging behind.

His throat is tight and he aches.

The tune of good king Wenceslas is in his head.

And he's walking because he knows that otherwise he'll fall.

He's not sure he can get back up again if he does.

When he sees the firefly dancing about his head, he knows that he is hallucinating.

For no other reason than it is there he follows it through the snow as it falls heavier until it is deep about his ankles.

\---------------

 

The house is almost derelict and the furniture is rotten. There has been a fire. It's got some roof left, and is shelter, if not much. It'd be just his luck that it's haunted.

He huddles against the fireplace, everything here is too sodden to burn. He just shivers into his coat, not regretting that he gave his coat to Duffy. She needed it more. He hunkers down to wait out the storm.

He wakes to the firefly buzzing about his head, batting into his face. He uses his good hand to wave it away.

He's cold. So very cold.

He's so cold it doesn't hurt anymore.

He thinks that it is a bad thing but he can't remember why.

He just lets his eyes close, he's so very tired.

\---------------

 

Wake up!

It's a tinny voice in his ear.

Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup

He can't keep his eyes open.

He just wants to sleep.

So he does.

 

\------------------------

 

He wakes to a woman's voice and she's pissed. "Call the dog or you will die." She grabs his face but Dean doesn't know her and it's so hard to focus, he's so cold and so tired. The snow is packed up around his legs. "There is help coming, child, but call the dog or you will die."

He's so cold.

He's taken off his coat but he doesn't remember where he left it.

He feels hot and clammy and awkward.

He wants to move.

But he can't.

He says the words because it will make her go away. "Here boy."

She slaps him, hard across the face. "Dean," her voice is a whip crack. "Say the words."

"Here boy, here boy," his throat is so dry.

"Say the words, Dean, say 'I call you Eoighn of the Hunt.' "

So he says them because there's no reason not to, and she'll go away and he can sleep.

A hot heavy warmth settles in behind him and he dissolves into it.


	9. In which Dean discovers hospitals are pretty much the same no matter where you are.

The hospital has Dean in restraints because in his fever he wouldn't stay in bed and was violent with the male orderlies when they tried to force him.

They found him in the third floor supply closet where he bit the first nurse to come near him.

Dean promises the nurses sweetly that he will behave, and he'll only bite if they ask nicely. They're under doctor's orders not to release him, so he forces a grin and makes an inappropriate joke about bondage.

The nurse just smiles back at him because she's heard it all before. She checks his IV and bandages, fluffing his pillows before she goes to leave. "It's good to see you're doing better, Lieutenant, you had us scared for a while there."

Then before he can ask her what she means by lieutenant, she is gone in a tennis shoe'd squeak.

His left arm is in both a cast and sling, and there's a frame over his head so that when they release him from the restraints he can pull himself upright.

Dean had no idea how he got here, or even when.

The last thing he remembers is leaving the crash and walking into the snow.

 

\---------

The doctor is a stunner, a perfect twelve on a scale of one to ten, like Angelina Jolie in a white coat. She has less time for him than gum stuck to her shoe. She has a copper bob and her scrubs are pink, not blue, under the white coat. He flirts with her because, well, what man wouldn't but she just ignores him.

The nurses are clucking over what they call a bona fide hero but the Doctor ignores him completely.

\----------

Duffy comes to visit him on what he's considering the second day. Although his restraints have been undone his doctor has threatened him with actual physical violence if he so much as thinks about getting out of the bed.

Duffy is sitting a wheelchair. Her hair is brushed back into a quick pony, but she beams when she sees Dean and that makes it almost worthwhile. "You got help," she tells him and he hasn't the heart to tell her that it's not true.

She wants to spend the afternoon but the nurses aren't having it. She has to be tired. He's been very sick and so she blows him a kiss as they wheel her back to her own room.

Dean hates himself because he didn't get help. All he did was walk off into the snow.

\--------------

He tells the deputy the same lie, that he went to find help.

The deputy writes it down, and when Dean starts to talk, the words come out all on their own. "Yes sir, I ran on training. I couldn't not help. I was stationed at Faluja and I had to act." There is a harsh bark but inside him he's wondering where this is coming from. It's a great lie but it's not his lie. "So, yes, sir, I had to help."

Then his doctor is at the door with a wheelchair. "I don't recall giving you permission to talk to my patient, deputy." Her beauty makes her even more intimidating. "He is not in a position to answer your questions."

"I was asleep," Dean tells them and this is honest. "The crash woke me, sir. I don't know what caused it." Dean would really like to know who's talking because although it's his voice it sure as hell isn't him.

"Thanks, Lieutenant," the deputy says accepting the lies. "It's a good job that you were on that bus, you saved that girl's life. I wouldn't have known what to do."

"Yeah you would," Dean says, and it's him talking, "you do what you can."

"Well I don't know if anyone else will say it," the deputy looks so young it hurts, "But thanks, it could have been so much worse if you hadn't been there."

Dean visibly pales and he thinks that he's going to be sick.

"Lieutenant Summers," the doctor has a voice like perfumed smoke, "has PTSD and I have been flown out here on the Navy's bill to northwest bugfuck Massachusetts, so unless you spent ten years in John Hopkins studying trauma I suggest you fuck off and don't come back." The officer doesn't need to be told twice.

He runs off like a puppy with his tail between his legs.

"I'm Hathor," the doctor says, flipping her bang behind her ear, "now are you man enough to get out of the bed on your own, Dean Winchester, or do I have to lift you?"

Dean struggles from the bed, collapsing into the chair heavily. "PTSD?" He asks her.

"After six months in Hell we'd all have PTSD," she answers bluntly checking her pockets. "Now we're going for a walk, because the smell of this place is . . ."

She wheels him through the corridors without a word, to the lift, down, and then outside. It's bitterly cold and the paths are gritted, snow piled up in brown heaps at the side. "I am dying for a cigarette," she says sitting on the bench and pulling the packet from her pocket. "The next time your guardian angel tells you to do something hows about you listen, eh?" Dean suspected that she wasn't quite the doctor she pretended to be although she certainly knows what she's doing.

She lights the cigarette and takes a deep drag, holding it in her lungs. She's not enjoying it, in fact it's more like a chore. Something she has to do but would rather not. "If Castiel had asked me I would have explained to him to put horns on it before he shoved it where the sun don't shine, but I can't bear to see Horace cry."

Because he is Dean Winchester he can't resist the snark. "I'm glad that someone cares."

"Look, monkey," she tells him, "you were told and I have other things to do." The smoke is pluming from her lips. She probably has the most perfect mouth Dean has ever seen on a woman. She's perfectly lush, slightly overlarge curves that would just spill over the hand. "So I have to come here to this place with a name I'm not even going to try to mangle to pick up your pieces. Tell me monkey, the real reason you walked into the snow."

"I could hear the hounds."

"Fuckwit. You were in a serious bus crash, you had a stunning concussion." She's smoked the cigarette down to the filter in almost record time, and stubs it out on the arm of the bench, lighting another, without pause."You have no idea how fucking lucky you are that I'm soft hearted."

Dean's not sure he should believe her. "I'm cold." He doesn't think this is surprising, after all it must be negative 5 out here and he's in a hospital gown and robe.

"Suck it up, you were the one determined to die of hypothermia. If I hadn't had to listen to Horace telling me that you're the fucking Son of the Morning, I'd still be in Cali and you would make do with this pathetic excuse for a witch doctory." Hathor shivers, "Fuck, it's colder than the virgin Mary's cunt out here." She crushes out the second cigarette, gone now, even faster than the first. She looks at the packet, debating a third, "and not a word of fucking thanks."

"Maybe if you'd let me get a word in," Dean replies. " I would really like to go in before my balls drop off."

Hathor's grin is leonine and cruel. She looks like she could swallow his soul without dropping her cigarette. "I should have cut them off for making me come out here. But Horace means a lot to me and you were kind to him, so I felt that I owed you a favor." She decides to have the third cigarette, clearly enjoying this one. "In one of my incarnations, monkey, I am rage and war. Trust me, monkey, be glad I'm not pissed."

"Well, tell that to the woman in my dream that crashed the fucking bus."

Hathor laughs, forcing the smoke from her lungs in staccato bursts. "Ereshkigal? She couldn't crash windows with a lifetime subscription to BustyAsianBeauties.com and a cup of orange juice." Her laugh is derisive. "Shit happens, monkey, you were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"That's me," Dean smiles, "Fate's bitch."

Hathor's eyes are a liquid brown that look incapable of the thoughts she voices. "If you were Fate's bitch you'd be unable to walk." She makes a gesture of size with her cigarette. "He can't even wear fucking pants he's that hung."

"You know what," Dean says, "Doctors don't normally curse like you do." He's not mentioning the fact she smokes like a dragon.

Hathor gives him a joyless smile around her cigarette. "Their loss," she finishes the cigarette and stubs it out with it's brethren on the metal arm of the bench. "Right. I need a coffee and a warm through. Seth's got the right fucking idea, live in the fucking desert. It's not so fucking cold."

Dean makes a comment about being out here in a hospital robe, bare shins, a bandage on his left side and socks. She doesn't listen.

\-----------

Castiel is at the door to his room when Hathor wheels him back, trying unsuccessfully to gain entry.

Hathor is meek and polite to all the people who greet her in the hall, but she takes on a hard brittle look when she sees the angel and gives him that grim smile that suggests she plans violence and it won't be pretty. "It's okay," she tells the nurses, "I know I said immediate family only, but this is his partner."

All of the blood that Dean didn't lose in the snow rushes to his face. But he does not blush because Dean Winchester does not blush.

One of the nurses mutters to the male nurse beside her, "Told you that he had a mouth made for blow jobs." Dean splutters but Hathor just smiles and lets Castiel take the handles of the chair to give them some privacy.

\----------------

Dean was wrong before. In comparison to the way that she treats the angel, Hathor was nice to him. In fact, she was downright genial.

She sits in the visitors chair, leaving Dean in his wheelchair, and crosses her legs, then her arms in what is probably the most closed off position that she can manage without yoga. She looks at the angel. "And you, flyboy, can fuck right off."

She tucks her hair back behind her ear, and then puts her arms back under her breasts which just makes them look bigger. She's actually making scrubs look sexy in an 'I'm quite prepared to rip off your head and spit down your throat for looking at me like that' kind of way.

Castiel nods his head in that simple and innocent way of his. "I am merely checking upon my charge, Lady Hathor. Although I trust your judgment in medical matters, Dean is a complicated patient and I am fond of him."

"Dean's a pain," Hathor corrects, "and he bites, but I don't care for heavenly interference. I don't need it."

Castiel walks a very fine line between obsequious and dangerous. The paradox is amazing to watch: that Castiel might bow before her but it's clearly lip service, and still doesn't show any throat. "Of course not, my Lady Hathor, after all it is all that you are."

"Cut the bullshit, flyboy, next time you pick a monkey to save the world make sure he's got as much common sense as a fucking rock."

"I am, of course, grateful."

"Fuck that shit," Hathor curses, tightening her arm which makes her bosom stick out even further. She's starting to look like an obscene cartoon. "He's just lucky that Horace likes him, and Horace means so very fucking much to me. He was crying, fucking crying, and I dropped every fucking thing to give this monkey hot baths because of all the stupid fucking things to do he left the scene of a fucking accident to freeze to death. And let us not mention the hundred and forty fucking stitches in his leg."

Dean wants to get a word in. His nature requires that he speak up in his own defense but Castiel is incredibly powerful and scares him a little and he is bowing, of a sort, before this foul-mouthed woman.

"Lady Hathor," the angel says in his perfectly calm and breathy tone, "I owe you this man's life." Dean knows that this is significant, that this is a salve to her pride and it is important that Castiel says it but he doesn't know why. He thinks that Sam would and he misses his brother so much right then it's a physical ache.

"And that doesn't fucking help," Hathor bitches looking at Dean, "you might as well stick a great big fucking neon sign over his head saying free meat, get it here. By all the heavens, monkey, why not just advertise in the national rag, fewer people will see it. Dear demons and all dark fucking things that ever crept, crawled or fucking slithered: I AM HERE."

"Dean," Castiel says turning, "you must not. They will find you as they did in the House of Five Aspects."

"No wonder he tried to kill himself," Hathor's tone is dark and oily, "if you left him with that old witch."

Dean wants to defend Magda because she was nice to him when she didn't have to be. He liked the House of Five Aspects and Bridhe, he was comfortable there. Castiel beats him to it. "Will you take him under your glory then?"

"Fuck no," Hathor exclaims, "I have enough woes with fucking Seth and Horace, I don't need a stupid monkey messing with my shit." Dean is secretly relieved but he won't say it. He is looking forward to leaving the hospital to get away from Hathor more than anything else.

"Bell Keys," Castiel says and Dean has no idea what it means, "has agreed that he might stay with her whilst he recovers."

Hathor pulls her bangs back behind her ear and for a second she looks very naked and very cruel. "You wrong me, angel," she says, "I have retarded his healing because they had taken x-rays before I arrived here and there were things I couldn't explain away. He'll be fine within a week of leaving this place, better than new."

Castiel leans against the bed like a tightly coiled spring, just waiting for a release that he does not allow. "Thank you, Lady Hathor, for he is cherished."

Hathor's laugh is ugly and acidic. "It's a man's place to love God not the other way around."

"There is a golden needle in my heart, that is my God," Castiel tells her with a beneficent smile, the smile that statues have in churches with their hands raised in blessing, "there is a golden dagger in the heart of my God, that is me."

Hathor is unimpressed and snorts to show it. "Well, childslayer, not all of us have to make do with repeats of fucking Stargate to survive do we?" It's clearly a point of contention between them because she unfolds herself from the chair, "I can't say it's been fun." Then she walks out of the room in a sexy strut muttering to herself in a language that Dean doesn't recognize.

It is only then that Castiel relaxes. His shoulders visibly drop.

"So you and Hathor, hey?" Dean waggles his eyebrows and offers a leer.

Castiel recognizes it as a deflection and ignores it. Dean thinks he probably would have too. "I called upon your friend, Robert. I asked Aziraphael but then decided that Robert would have more faith in the tidings if I told him myself."

"Tell him what?" Dean's not happy about this. He doesn't want the angels anywhere near his family. Castiel does not approve of them and is open in his rejection.

"That you were injured in the line of duty in case he saw it on the televisual device and that he need not worry, for you were in good hands. He said that I was to tell you something." Castiel's gaze is implacable and serene. It makes Dean uncomfortable. "That you are an idjut." Dean snorts a laugh. "He made me repeat it several times to make sure that I got it right."

"Way to go, Bobby," Dean says and he grins because it's just so very Bobby and it makes Dean feel loved in ways that Castiel's repeated assurances don't.

Castiel, implacable, ineffable and divine, unsettles Dean and makes him feel flawed and dirty. He can't bear the weight of his gaze. He feels, as Castiel looks at him, like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck. Yet, the smell of him is soothing and familiar, of old churches and Christmases and happier times. The knowledge that he is here helps make the taint of Hell, that sick chasm within, recede. "Do you feel any pain?" The angel asks.

"I'm good," Dean grins, "who needs angels when you've got vicodin."

He has refused the pain medication, but Castiel doesn't need to know that.

Dean understands the pain, of all things, makes him feel real.

"I would not have you suffer needlessly." Castiel's voice is soft and breathy and he's leaning down so his face is just there - almost kissing distance from Dean's mouth. "I do not care for your anguish and I would take it from you."

"I'm good," Dean says pushing himself further back into his wheelchair to get away from the angel because it's just too much.

"More than you know." Castiel tells him. Dean wants Castiel to accept him and close that space between them. Then he could just put his forehead on Castiel's shoulder and just let go, Castiel will understand because Castiel pulled him from Hell.

Instead, he just clenches the fist on his broken arm, taking the surge of pain to make him stronger. "You could help with a jail break," he jokes, tapping the chair with his foot. "unless you're scared of Hathor, that is."

Something unknowable and ancient crosses the angel's eyes and he moves behind the chair to take the handles, "As you wish."

Dean's so amazed that it is so easy to convince Castiel that they're in the car, a white Chevy Nova that's head and shoulders above the Honda, and driving away from the hospital when he finally notices that he is still wearing the hospital gown.


	10. In which Dean learns that sending someone who doesn't need to eat out for food is a bad idea.

Castiel has a bullshit meter that is immune to anything that Dean can throw at it. There are the little lies that the angel accepts, knowing them to be untruths. Anything else and the angel quirks that eyebrow and just looks at Dean until the truth comes out.

Castiel, Dean discovers, is not above a lie or two himself.

The piece of crap Nova, which Dean's considering to be the Anti-Impala because apart from being made by the same company this car is his baby's polar opposite. The only decent thing about the car is that it has a CD player, however, there's a CD wedged in it and it only plays half of track two.

The song would be ignorable, or even okay, if Dean wasn't driving across North America, stuck in the backseat - hurt, with an angel at the wheel.

And Castiel is singing along breathily but focussed, driving like it's not Dean in the back seat but Miss Daisy. Castiel is singing because he knows the words, having heard the song a million or so times by now

Castiel likes to sing and he does so with gusto.

"Take it, take it, take it easy on me  
Just make it make it make it harder to breathe  
So I'll climb on top and I'll never stop  
Until I make you forget who you are  
And just feel."

Dean is sure that angels shouldn't sing songs like that, especially with the sort of joy that Castiel is managing.

People have gone to hell for imagining less.

So, Dean is savouring the pain of each and every bump in the road against his arm and hip because it means he's thinking about the pain and not that the angel is singing. Dean knows if he gets anywhere near the front of this car he's breaking that damn CD player for good.

He wants to smite it.

No, he wants to fucking smite it.

Fucking, that's the word, yeah.

Fuck the angel who likes this song and sings so joyously.

Fuck the angel.

Fuck him.

Run his tongue along the crease in Castiel's lip, down to where they part, and then to the cleft of his chin where it will prickle and use his hands on his arms to give him bruises.

Mark him like he marked me.

Mark him.

Mark him.

Make him yours.

Then the car jolts through a pothole and the train of thought is broken, Dean is glad even as he shouts "Fucking suspension!"

Castiel looks at him in the rear-view mirror. Dean can't read the angel's expression and he doesn't know if Castiel can read minds the way that some of them so clearly do, but he slows the car. "Shush," he says and Dean knows it's some kind of angel-fu because he sleeps.

\--------------------------

If Dean is expecting to dream of Hell he's sadly disappointed.

The dream is very different from that.

He's in the Impala, lying in the back seat on a bright pink fleece blanket.

He's wearing no shirt.

Castiel is in the back seat too.

Dean is on his back, thighs around the angel's hips and Castiel's shirt is pulled free of those ugly black slacks and the front is unbuttoned. Dean's hands are on his skin, cool, so cool under his hands, but almost human warm. Castiel is grinding his hips against Dean's and the Impala is squealing and bouncing under the force of it, it's like she's part of this as the angel grinds and rubs and it's so fucking good.

And Castiel is kissing him, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth and those cold blue eyes are looking at him with that impossible, inhuman gaze.

And it's just fucking hot.

And he groans.

And in the front of the car a man sings, "Until I make you forget who you are," and Dean is breathing the angel in, "And just feel."  
\-----------------

Dean wakes up in a hotel bed, his jersey pants the only thing that he's wearing and Castiel is sitting quietly on the very back of the desk chair, balanced like some bird, staring at him.

Dean doesn't remember the end of the car journey or how Castiel clearly carried him up here.

His mouth tastes like crap and his tongue is furred. His arm feels better though, and he obviously needed the sleep. Dean, however, can't accept that. "You did that," he accuses Castiel, "you used your angel-fu on me."

Castiel only blinks.

"You put me to sleep," Dean continues, "with your across-the-car-fingers-to-the-forehead- Vulcan-nerve-pinch-thing." He's pissed, not because he slept but because his fingers remember the cool feel of the angel's skin.

He's mostly angry at himself.

His fury feels like flames at the edges of his consciousness that he could unleash in billowing waves until there's nothing left but fire.

Dean suppresses the need to do it because he can't help but think that it's the taint of Hell and he wants nothing to do with that part of himself. He never dreamt of fire before Hell, well, other than salting AND burning.

"You are healing as fast as your body can. It will make you tired and hungry." Castiel never apologises. He rarely even deigns to explain himself. "I have food."

Now, Dean is nervous because, those are the exact words Castiel used when he appeared with the two bags of clothing from The Gap of all places, "I have food."

Only an angel or a Martian would get clothes from The Gap, overpriced and funnily shaped for people with no waists and arms like orangutan, and call what he had food.

This time the food made a weak attempt at being Chinese. There was a sweet-corn soup that could have been used to apply wallpaper, crunchy rice and a miscellaneous meat in what looked like, but neither smelled or tasted like, soy sauce.

It was inedible, even by Dean's standards, which were pretty low. Dean felt awful for putting that disappointed look in the angel's face, but Castiel didn't need to eat and mistakes were easy to make.

A drive thru solved the problem, substituting burgers that tasted wet and a strawberry milkshake for glue soup and whatever it had been instead of soy sauce. Dean was hoping that the meat in the rice had been squirrel but there was something about it that half convinced him that the long and stingy thing had once been a brownie.

McDonalds is the same everywhere: all life cooked from the meat and taste covered with real American cheese and special sauce. So, Dean ate the burger while sitting in the back seat of the Anti-Impala with his leg up on the backseat, a tartan blanket that he was sure wasn't his over him, and that damn song on repeat.

Castiel drove, slowly and carefully, all the while making orgiastic sucking noises as he happily drank the milk shake.

Dean just tried to concentrate on his food.

\---------------------------------------------

The hotel is magazine brand chic. It has one very wide bed with sheets as stiff as paper. There is a television on a stand in one corner, and through a door there is a small sitting room.

Dean suspects that he's been here before but doesn't know why, because they've always used cheap motels where questions aren't asked.

The spare cardkey, which is on the bedside cabinet, says 1408 and the logo shows a dolphin. It doesn't mean anything to him.

The food in this case is a blueberry pie. An entire pie. With a bottle of very fine cognac.

It's funny, so Dean laughs and that hurts but he doesn't stop laughing and Castiel doesn't understand but the joy of it overwhelms him and the angel smiles. "Joy is in the ears that hear."

So Dean grins at him, "Do you know what goes great with pie," he asks through his best shit eating grin, "pizza, we'll order in."

\-------------

Four cheese pizzas with garlic crust and coffee and chicken bites on the side, goes a long way to appeasing Dean's hunger but it's finished all too soon because Castiel is fascinated by it and steals five of the twelve slices. Now the angel sits on the end of the bed, cross-legged, showing those tattered black socks between shoes and trouser hems. He's licking the last of the cheese grease from his fingers and making happy noises.

Although Dean can't see it, he knows that Castiel is using his wings to balance himself because the way he's sitting is all wrong. It's one of those non-human things that he does effortlessly.

Dean is scratching at the stitches in his leg, as the angel happily slurps at his own fingers, and so debates risking the pain in his hips, that Hathor had told him was an immobile fracture needing only rest, to get the blueberry pie in the mini fridge.

Considering how much Castiel enjoyed the pizza Dean wants to feed him the pie.

He also wants to jack up the leg of his trousers and scratch the skin of his leg until that damn itching stops or he reaches bone - whichever comes first.

"I must check your stitches," Castiel says watching him fastidiously not scratch. "They might be ready to come out. Do you mind if I look at them?"

It's not what Dean is used to. Sam would just pin him down with the scissors and the tweezers and yank them out as Dean whined. Of course, Dean whines because it is a bitch pulling stitches out and he only gets to complain over the little things. If he's whining they know that he's okay.

"Okay," Dean says and swallows. His throat feels swollen.

Castiel leans forward, hands and knees on the bed, and with his face just above Dean's foot he slowly peels back the black jersey pants and Dean can feel Castiel's chill breath on his shin.

The angel's cool body temperature is one more quirk that serves to remind Dean that Castiel is not human. Sometimes it confuses Dean because he knows most things get sluggish when they're cold but it doesn't seem to effect the angel at all.

Yet Castiel's breath is soft as he carefully parts the hairs on Dean's shin, doing his best not to tug on the skin as he pulls away the medical tape.

His expression is so very focussed that Dean wants to push him away, but then he remembers that Castiel asked and he said yes and Castiel is so very powerful and he could angel-fu him and do it anyway.

Dean sees that Castiel looks at him as if he is worthy of such devotion and Dean knows that's he's not.

The angel uses a knife, Dean's silver letter opener, to cut the stitch and then tugs it out with his teeth. His mouth is so close to Dean's skin that he can feel the moistness of his lips and the almost heat of Castiel's breath.

In his head Dean is chanting too much too much too much, over and over again.

He wants to pull his leg away, to put his hands on Castiel's head and push him off, to get up and run into the snow, away from this hotel, away from this angel, away from Sammy, away.

Yet, Dean doesn't move.

He just lies there on the wide hotel bed, cushioned on a mountain of feather pillows and Castiel's touch is almost sexual. It tears Dean in two because he does want it. It's not that Castiel is a man, because that's old news, but he's an angel and the line has to be there.

Dean has been to Hell and he's not going back. Being with Castiel would be blasphemy and he has no idea what it will do to the angel. Surely, Magda was only teasing wasn't she?

He won't go back to hell, and he won't condemn Castiel either – even if all he wants to do is push his hands into that dark hair and pull him up and kiss him.

Dean's used to not taking what he wants. He's a Winchester after all.


	11. In which Dean discovers just how very human an angel of the Lord can be.

Dean is watching Castiel as he moves through his work out.

They're in a new hotel. He has pushed the couch and table pushed back to create an open space. There is a pool of soft sodium orange streetlight on the carpet. The angel stands in the centre of the light in a pair of black briefs as he steps, twirls, and lunges with his twin spears an extension of his body.

It is amazingly smooth: the light catching on muscles, defined by sweat, pulling and distending as Castiel dances.

Dean can only call it dancing.

It is beautiful to watch.

And painful too.

Castiel does this at night when he thinks that Dean is sleeping.

Dean wakes as soon as Castiel leaves the bed.

Dean insists that Castiel sleeps next to him because it is comforting and the soft Christmas smell holds back the visions of Hell, but once he thinks Dean is asleep he rises and does this.

Dean thinks that the beautiful dancing is called a Kata.

The only thing that he knows for sure is that he was wrong before, because this is Angel-fu.

Step, lunge, twist and the two spears flash, each moving independently. It is beautiful to watch.

For the three nights that Dean has watched him he's realised that there are never any deviations in the movement. The angel has very clearly done these exact same exercises in exactly this pattern for thousands of years - even if the vessel is new.

That is amazing too.

So, Dean lies in the bed, eyes as thin as slits, and watches the angel.

Step; step; twist; step; lunge; parry; backstep; step; shuffle into Thibault; lunge; counter with breeze parting the reeds; backstep; backstep; twist; Capo Ferre; double step with spear thrust down; monkey dazzles the snake.

He is moving through a hundred martial arts and Dean ignores the fact that he knows the names of all these attacks, the defences, the lunges, because they're not something he should know.

Then when the motions are done, taking exactly the same amount of time and care, Castiel wipes himself down with a hotel towel, removing the worst of the sweat from his body and then he climbs back into the bed.

Castiel sleeps better after the exercise, and when he sleeps he snuggles and shuffles across the bed until he is pressed against Dean, hot and smelling of fresh sweat.

Dean sleeps too.

\---------------

They're checking into the third hotel in six days and Dean hurts.

The pain settles into a bone deep ache and he's tired. Castiel is quiet which just makes it worse. Unlike Sam, the angel can't be negotiated into prank wars or even name calling which just eases the tension when they drive.

Dean knows exactly which bones he broke in the accident, but he's sure that there are others Hathor missed from the way his body twinges. The bones he did break certainly hurt enough for most of them.

He's also pretty sure that Castiel has been crushing painkillers into his coffee.

Dean is sore, tired and tetchy and every now and again Castiel will turn around with this weary expression on his face and then Dean loses hours. He's pretty sure that being kidnapped by aliens would be less disconcerting than just dropping off.

The sleep isn't restful though.

Dean refused to get into the bed and sits on the arm chair, although it's unlikely he'll be able to get out of it again on his own. Castiel is fussing, he wants to be somewhere else but he won't go.

Castiel's trench was left in the car, as he carried up the clothes he'd bought Dean.

Dinner is awkward. Roast beef and boiled vegetables and Dean thinks, but can't be sure, that it's Monday. All he is sure of is that America has started it's landslide into Christmas because decorations are starting to appear and the adverts on the TV are extolling the joys of family.

It just makes him crankier because he misses Sammy and he's not ready to admit that his brother is anything other than a dick right now.

So when Castiel excuses himself, quietly, determined, Dean roots around in his pack for the phone that Magda gave him and just stands there looking at it and hurts.

It hurts.

Dean decides he can't take it anymore and opens the fitted wardrobe in the room and sits on the floor, because it's quiet and dark there, closing the door behind him.

\------------------------------------

It's dark when he wakes up, warm and comfortable. His first thought is that the angel did the mind-mojo on him and has carried him to bed, but then he realises that although he is wrapped up in the coverlet he is still in the wardrobe and somehow Castiel has managed to wedge himself between Dean and the wall so that Dean's back is against the angel's chest.

In that moment Dean feels so safe and loved that he can't bear it. He's still clutching the phone in his hand and it's too much because Castiel is almost warm enough, almost.

Dean starts to struggle.

And Castiel clearly understands because he just holds on tighter, binding him in the strong cradle of his arms and his thighs, and then his warmed marble cold finger finds the cleft of Dean's lips and Dean softens. "Sleep," the angel says, "there are days when even Gods must hide from the world."

Dean doesn't want to sleep, but he does.

\-------------------------------------

In his dream there is a vast tiled floor which is a map of America. It looks ancient and written over North Dakota are the words "Here Be Dragons." There are small figurines all over the map, and small houses, hotels, and factories. There are tiny cars driving along tiny highways. There are angels sitting here and there along the map. He knows that the map is called an Orbyrarium in the way that things are known in dreams.

Sitting over the Grand Canyon is Horace, his hair swept back and desperately needing a wash, with a nasty red stain on the front of his shirt and chin. When he sees Dean he jumps to his feet. "I knew if I waited here long enough you'd show up."

"Where are we?" Dean asks.

"The place between," Castiel says beside him. Castiel is simply there, and with that same knowledge Dean knows what the map is – a representation. That somewhere on this map Sam can be found.

"Hathor is annoyed that you ran off," Horace says, "she wasn't finished yet." He puts his hands on Dean's arms and he is altered, in this place he is both a teenager with that same itchy twitchy restlessness that he had before and a tall handsome man with very dark hair and eyes Dean could drown in. "She gave me this for you." He has his hands on Dean's arms and then leans in to kiss the cut on Dean's forehead.

Castiel pulls him back and kisses Horace hard on the mouth. "He is mine," Castiel says when he pulls back, his fingers pressed hard into Horace's arms, and Dean's stomach tightens and he thinks he might vomit, his eyes narrow and his fists tighten. "I will give him Hathor's gift."

Horace just smiles.

Dean is aware that the dream changes because he's in a bed, but it's not the hotel bed. It's a wide silk pillow with layers of gauze softening the light, and he's not quite naked, but near enough, and Castiel is leaning over him, with his wings outstretched, each feather tipped in dark red, and then Castiel leans down and presses his face to the skin of his pelvic bowl, to the flesh over the break, and kisses.

Dean throws his good arm over his face as Castiel's mouth trails up his rib cage, taking care over the broken ones, and thinks of anything he can, because this is too much, even though he knows that Castiel is passing on Horace's gift, the thing that Hathor gave him. He knows that this is not sexual - Castiel is kissing it better.

The trailing of the angel's tongue along the scar on his leg is too much for Dean and he gives in to it, and cries out, and Castiel hushes them, with kisses to the cuts on the side of his face, to the bruises and Dean wants to weep but Winchester's don't cry.

 

\---------------

 

The Queen of Sheba is the complete opposite of what Dean could have possibly predicted. When Castiel told him that the mysterious Bell Keys ran a bar in Chicago, he did not expect the Queen of Sheba.

It's a warehouse in a reasonable part of town, there are a few other bars about but it's clearly the only club.

It's also a gay club.

For women.

Castiel is more uncomfortable than even Dean is when they go through the front door.

The female bouncer looks like she could bench press a truck with one arm and still break Dean in two with the other. She has wheat blonde hair and a bosom large enough to make playboy weep. When Castiel goes to the door, ignoring the rather impressive line, she waves him in, keeping her eye on Dean's ass until the door closes behind it.

All the waiters are men.

They are all tastefully undressed and what clothes they are wearing are made of leather. They have trays held aloft with martini glasses and olives. It seems to be the only drink that they serve.

There are women everywhere.

There is a woman on the stage, she's wearing a snake skin dress that fits like it's her own skin, showing off just how hugely pregnant she is. She looks set to give birth any day.

Other than the bump she's perfectly styled in a forty's getup. She is singing in a smoky voice.

"Other dancers may be on the floor dear, but my eyes will see only you  
Only you have the right technique when we sway I go weak . . . "

When she sees Dean she winks at him.

The girl at the bar is a tiny red haired Korean girl with a very large pitcher, she waves when she sees them.

It's clear that they recognise Castiel and so Dean decides there and then that they aren't human. It doesn't particularly surprise him.

He's not surprised by much anymore.

Not since Castiel dragged him from hell.

The woman comes out of the crowd like an iceberg, a vision in white PVC and silk looking like every wet dream of Emma Frost he's ever had, and Dean gapes. She has been poured into the PVC pants and a white silk stomach protector with ice blonde hair and eyes like crystals.

"You will to be following me," she says in a rich voice, heavily accented, "Our lady is waiting." She pronounces her w's as a hard v sound. "She not care to be waiting." The blonde Amazon turns around with a stiletto clack and leaves for the stairs.

Bettie Page's lovely twin is stood at the top of the stairs in a sheathe of black satin. She slaps Castiel on the ass as he walks past.

The angel ignores her, instead he stepping closer to Dean. "Be reverent," he tells her, "Lady Bell Keys is the Queen of Heaven."

\---------------------

Bilquis sits at her desk in a pair of silk pyjamas. She is even more unexpected than her club. He realises that he has been misspelling her name in his head because it has been embroidered unto the pocket of her shirt.

She isn't much taller than Magda was, possibly chest height on Dean and heavy set. She is black and has her hair in dreadlocks held back by a silk sash about her forehead.

Unlike all the other voluptuously beautiful women in this place she is not pin up quality. Her cheekbones are too heavy, her jaw too square and her nose flattened, but when she sees Castiel she smiles and suddenly Dean feels like the only man in the universe.

This plain, short, dumpy woman is, in that moment the beautiful woman in the entire world and kingdoms will be ransomed in her honour. He doesn't see the mannish jaw any more only skin the colour of dustbowl Oklahoma. Sparkling teeth and rosy lips hide the longinsh ears.

When she smiles he would give his life for her, but then once she greets Castiel the smile slips from her face and the Goddess is gone.

Her accent is classic miscellaneous American, a little bit of too many things to be enough of one to place. She is flat chested, and square hipped with a round belly and badly painted toenails in ugly bath mules. "Dearest Castiel," she says, "I am honoured to have you in my house."

Castiel bows his head before her to accept her blessing. "My queen, wife of the most honoured of prophets," he says and she puts her hand, short fingered, square, heavy, on his cheek and tilts his face to look at her.

Dean is suddenly, painfully, jealous, it seethes within him.

Then Dean realises that he's jealous of the way that Castiel is treating some woman with an unpronounceable name in some out of the way club like she was the best thing ever, and Dean decides that's a bad thing.

He swallows it down to find it tastes of taint.

Too many things lately have tasted of that kind of taint.

"Wayne is down below," she says, "he'll sort your boy out with a room, some clothes, things to eat. He'll be safe here as long as it isn't pushed. My girls won't hurt him as long as he doesn't hurt them."

She turns and she leaves a taste of sandalwood in the air behind her. "He cannot stay here forever, this is not a house of boarding, but until New Years I will offer him sanctuary here."

"My Queen," Castiel nods, "it is more than I could have prayed for. I shall stay only this night to settle him."

Dean hates it when people talk about him like he's not even there. Especially when it's Castiel.

She turns to the glamazon at the door in her squeaky white PVC trousers. She looks like she's made of diamonds, "To be following me now," she addresses them, "I bringing you to Vain."

\--------------

Wayne looks as exasperated as Dean feels. He's got the telephone receiver wedged between his ear and his neck and has a red face as he explains, with the icy tone of someone who has explained this ten times and is one step away from homicide, that the goose that they ordered did NOT arrive no matter what the company's invoice says.

Unlike the women upstairs, he's dressed for the winter in an oversized pull over and jeans. He could be the same age as Dean give or take ten years. Dean never could tell with men. He's perfectly ordinary looking, apart from the fact he appears about ready to commit genocide over a missing goose.

When he sees Dean he waves at him to wait a minute, then frowns and without stopping his explanation that he has paid for this goose and he will have it if he has to go down to them and explain that in person, he gestures a drinking motion, points to a cupboard and then the coffee maker.

Dean shrugs and takes three cups from the cupboard and then pours three cups of coffee.

It's Christmas flavoured.

Wayne takes the coffee and holds up one finger, then points at the phone, then gestures with his hand to the stools around the worktop. Dean understands this language. He sits down and stares at the coffee hoping it might taste a little less of Christmas and a little more of caffeine.

Castiel seems to appreciate it more than Dean can. He smiles at Dean and looks at the kitchen. It's a large house attached to the rear of the club, he can feel the drum beat through the walls.

It has also been decorated to the best that Sears can manage with Christmas trees and wreathes. Along the stairs, someone has replaced traditional Christmas stockings with fishnets. There are even things in the fishnets.

At the end is one long knitted sock with a paper sticker saying Wayne and one knitted stocking, which judging by the puce coloured wool with orange piping came from Magda, with the sticker saying Dean hanging off it.

There is a tray of cookies on the table and Dean takes one, then bites into it, pulls a face and pockets it so he can dispose of it later with no one the wiser.

Castiel remains implacable apart from a strangely childish glee at the decorations, which includes tinsel wrapped around a glitter ball propped up in the corner. The lights fascinate the angel, whose expression is still blank, which suggests that Dean is learning to read him better.

Wayne continues arguing with the butcher, who is clearly adamant that the goose was delivered, although Wayne is sure that it wasn't despite that he ordered it in September at a premium price.

The Emma Frost look alike excused herself as soon as they crossed the parking lot and went to the kitchen. Obviously, the winter chill suited her because she didn't bother with anything over the silk she wore – not even a bra.

She just pushed them into the kitchen and waited until Wayne noticed them.

Dean has just noticed that Wayne is wearing plush cow slippers. He is reminding the vendor that they had been using the same butcher for ten years and that he isn't really given to complaining, so if the goose was going to taste of anything it needs to be hung so he really does need it sooner rather than later, and he isn't accusing the delivery boy of stealing it, but these things happen and Wayne will be delighted to drive across town to pick up another one.

Dean knows that he would have hung up and got a turkey ages ago.

When Wayne finally hangs up, after Dean has consumed two cups of the Christmas flavoured coffee, he just shakes his head. "Come on, I'll take you to your room, it's a bit small but this was sprung on me short notice and everyone descends for Christmas. Kumiho and Zsu Zsu already have to share." There is a deep sigh, "which of course means fireworks at some point, but no one wanted to share with you. No offence Jean,"

"Dean," Dean corrects.

"Sorry, the accents around here are educational. Dean, no one knows you and we're taking you on the word of Castiel," he smiles at the angel at the table, "and if you want to stay over I'll get you a chair and a blanket, there literally are no beds left in the inn, but I'm not quite ready to make you sleep in the stable yet."

Dean learns that Wayne is always like this, he doesn't stop, and this is his third pot of Christmas tainted coffee today. Considering the women he lives with Dean really isn't that surprised.


	12. In which Dean learns coffee works better for accepting the truths of the universe than bourbon and trouble comes in threes.

Wayne talks.

And talks.

And talks.

In fact, Wayne very rarely stops talking and if he does it's because one of the girls is talking over him. He doesn't talk so that people may listen, he just talks.

When Bilquis, who they refer to as "management," talks everyone listens. Even Dean who is sure he could take her in a fight.

She's pretty much the only one he's sure of that with.

Seiglinde, who manages the door looks like she uses mountains as weights.

Zsu Zsu is whip fast and can steal a cup of coffee like a snake striking prey. She looks like Emma Frost from the X-men but has her diamond hard manner too.

Kumiho, who is small and perfect with red, brown, and white hair complemented by golden eyes in an Asian face. She's also not afraid to fight dirty.

Lamia, swollen belly and all, can tell you things about the human body that are just plain terrifying.

And Smyrna who creeps him out and gives Dean this look that suggests she knows exactly who he is, despite Pharamond's amazing papers, and what he's done and will happily bear him down when the time comes.

They're all sat around the kitchen table, Wayne talking uselessly, drinking coffee and bickering over slices of toast and jars of jam. Smyrna is using her butter knife to keep Kumiho from the lemon curd.

Dean wonders why, being just across the parking lot from the bar, that Wayne, who lives here and deals with this constantly, doesn't just mainline whiskey. Instead, he lives on his entire body weight of coffee beans, daily. He manages the house, but backs down to "management" if she so much as looks at him.

Wayne makes good coffee now that he has run out of the Christmas flavoured shit, with a week and a half till the holidays, which makes Dean suspect he's gonna go out and get more. That's OK though because he's got a game system that's just plain sweet and doesn't mind sharing.

Dean has hunted more monsters in the last three days on that game system than in his entire life. He's caught up on his comics. He's also bored stupid.

It has gotten bad enough that he's considering reading the book that's in the downstairs bathroom. He's sure that it's been made into a chick flick, and with this many girls in the house he knows he's read more Cosmo than is sane for a man his age. Dean is also sure that Wayne is clinging to him simply because he is a man and not another carrier of oestrogen.

An explicit article in the paper catches his eye. Three girls attacked in the park, each of them saying that it was a vampire. He knows it's not because if it was then none of them would be alive to tell the story. Probably just some kinked out rapist.

Just beneath the first article is one that mentions a car crash. Local superstition, which is more trustworthy than the empirical methods that the reporters use, says that it's the fifth crash in the same 100 yards a street and that apparently a young girl was run down and killed there.

It's a hunt, and it's the best news he's had since he arrived at the Queen of Sheba.

Dean is a soldier and soldiers have wars to fight, and this is his.

He wonders if Wayne might be up for it. It's a research- salt and burn- no one gets hurt- kind of job if he's reading it right. But it's Christmas and it's cold, there's snow everywhere, but it's not in this building, and it's not jumping about as some underdressed vampire cross breed and eating cheetos.

Dean's blood is almost singing with the anticipation of it. The fire that lurks at the edges of his mind at all times now flares hotly because when he finds the bones they'll burn. Oh yeah, they'll burn.

He realises that people don't normally think about fire like that. But fire lingers on Dean's mind, tickling the edges of everything he sees. Sometimes Dean wants to see the fire, to gather things together just to watch them burn.

\---------------

Park benches seem to call to him.

Dean's not sure why, but he finds himself sitting on them watching the world go by more now, since he was pulled from hell, than he ever did before.

He likes to watch the world, it reassures him that all is well, even if just underneath the crust is all the evil that man cannot possibly comprehend.

Yet, Moms take their kids to play in the park, even this late into winter with the snow piled up. The kids are more interested in pelting each other than playing on the swings and slides. Little laughing bundles of energy wrapped up in quilting and wool. Dean doesn't know why it's so very calming, just that it is.

There's a girl in the world's ugliest sweater, and matching cap, with a sled going down what is in truth a pathetic attempt at a hill. It seems to take her about ten paces to get to the top and she climbs on the sled, grins and then pushes off with all her weight for a two-second whoop. Then she climbs off, takes the sled by the rope, and tries again.

She's probably more heartening than any exhortation of optimism.

He's wearing Wayne's heavy winter coat and a hat he's acquired from Zsu Zsu, ignoring the fact that it's an ugly patterned thing with a bobble on top that makes him feel stupid -- but it's warm. The alternative is Kumiho's cat eared effort which has dangling things to wrap around the neck.

He's not that cold..

The gloves he got from Magda, are fingerless with mitten tops pinned back. Though, at the moment they're pulled tight over his fingers and pushed in the pockets of the coat. It's too damn cold.

Dean's a good little soldier. But the library was a bust and he doesn't want to go back to the Queen of Sheba because it is so loud there that the children are quiet in comparison. The women were bickering this morning, over that damn goose which it seems that Lamia might have stolen from the meat delivery. Dean is always of the opinion that women as pregnant as she is get their own way until they drop, that's when you give up entirely and just hand them your wallet.

The kids are still playing gleefully.

"Amazing, aren't they?" a man says. He's tall, perhaps as tall as Sam, in a dark floor length coat, bent forward and smelling strangely of incense. Dean doesn't even question who the man is. "I could watch them all day."

"I wouldn't advise it, in this day and age," Dean says bluntly. It's a joke but the angel, and it's clearly one of them, doesn't laugh.

"The gift of evil that just keeps giving," the angel says quietly, "It's a vicious circle." He watches the children, "snow is about to fall." He looks at the sky. "There's a storm coming, Dean, it's up to you to decide your place in it."

Dean reacts as he always does to such admonitions, he attacks. "Don't you have people to be saving? Christmas cards to be adorning?"

"I'm not that kind of angel." His voice is like gravel in cream. He'd be a handsome man if not for the promise of violence all about him.

"You know my name," Dean says, "what do they call you?"

"Reigert," the angel replies calmly, "but it's not important, just a concession. I know what you are called, so you can know what I am called." His eyes are like Castiel's, hard and unknowable. "It is only one of my names, just as Dean is only one of yours."

"And why are you here, Reigert of many names?" Dean's angry, he feels dirty, like this angel is invading his personal space. He came here for quiet, but the angel, who smells funny and moves slightly more naturally than most of them, is there.

"To see," the angel answers, "to watch the children. To find out your place in these things."

"I'm a hunter." Dean is emphatic as he says it.

"And I am fallen," the angel tells him and Dean's hand inches towards the knife in his boot. "Would you really, in front of all the children?" Dean knows he has him there, he would happily toast the angel but he'd lead him someplace quiet and dark first, away from the kids. He doesn't want this to be in front of the girl who is taking such joy from her sled and the excuse for a hill. "This isn't an attack, this is a moment of quiet."

"I'll kill you," Dean grits through his teeth.

"Maybe, maybe not. It doesn't matter really. I have no interest in you, and you are no threat to me." He looks around. "I love the cold, don't you? It makes everything so much clearer. Perhaps it is the light or the quality of the air."

"Perhaps you're just dicking me around while Lilith runs off with some group of school kids to hold hostage."

"Lilith is an irritant, a piece of grit in an otherwise comfortable shoe. She seeks to overthrow Hell only to recruit soldiers for her purpose," Reigert growls out the words, "I don't know what they told you -- but here," he raises two fingers in a blessing, the way that Castiel does when he's angel fu-ing Dean into sleep, and says very clearly and distinctly, "three rings for elven kings under the sky, seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone, nine for mortal men, doomed to die, and one for the Dark Lord upon his dark throne." He kisses the tips of the two fingers and presses them to Dean's forehead, just above his eyebrows.

Dean reels, waiting for something to happen. Nothing does. Someone calls him and Lamia is crossing the car park behind them, front open to the winter because her coat doesn't close over her belly as she runs in her high heels. When he turns back the children are still playing but the fallen angel is gone.

\--

The back parlour is a room in the old house that no one goes into, not even Wayne on his cleaning expeditions. It's saved for guests, which don't include Dean who is some kind of divinely given moocher, but there is a man sitting on the Victorian sofa, wrinkling the plastic covers and drinking coffee out of a mug that looks more out of place in this room than the dress maker's dummy in an apron dress in the corner.

The man is wearing an expensive suit and sunglasses, a white and yellow scarf and the most god-awful snake skin shoes Dean has ever seen. They match the scarf.

He is also very clearly a demon, perhaps it is the way his eyes flicker behind the designer shades, or the smell of sulphur, or maybe Dean's just getting better at picking them out. He's not in the mood, he's cold, and Lamia talked to him the entire way home but he had stopped listening as soon as she mentioned Wayne and the goose, that fight he's not getting involved in.

"Lamia, my dear, thank you for the coffee, I am here for," that's all it takes for Dean to be across the room with his silver letter opener to the demon's throat.

"You know what I learned." Dean growls out, "I don't need a fancy demon killing knife to gut you like a pig, I can stab you here," he pokes the point of the knife into the space above his breastbones, "and pop out your heart like a whelk, or here," he tapped him on the forehead where Castiel touches Dean to put him to sleep, "straight through the third eye."

"Trussse," the demon squeaks out, "I'm jusssst a delivery boy, and Bilquisssss will be pissssssed if you get blood on her carpet." The demon composes itself with a deep breath over the knife but Dean doesn't pull away the blade. He knows that demons only hiss under extreme duress and that gratifies him. "I'm Crowley," the demon says, "Aziraphael asked me to call in."

If the demon had mentioned Castiel Dean would have gutted him without a moment's thought. He's not quite sure where this new info has come from but he's not one to look a gift horse in the mouth when it's good info on how to kill these black smoky sons of bitches. Even one as pathetic as this one.

"You can't kill Crowley," Lamia says from the door, she has a tray in front of her with coffee for Dean and cakes, "it's a sanctuary, you can't kill anything in here, not even spiders." She puts the tray on the French polished table.

"But I can carve him up a bit, right?" Dean asks.

"Oh, yeah, sure," she says, "I'll get the cake knife, it's better than that little pig sticker of yours. I think there's still some coffee cake left in the fridge."

"I'm jussssst bringing a book." The demon hisses. He reaches into his inside pocket and takes the book, which is a hefty paperback unto the floor in front of him like an offering. "Azsssiraphael heard you were injured and thought you'd want ssssomething to read."

Dean pulls back the knife and the demon takes a deep breath. "I'm really not that kind of demon," he says, and straightens his black hair with his hand, "I make deals." The knife glints, "I'm a sort of long term invesssstor type, I build highwayssss and pop upssss." The knife point dips and Dean takes a step back, he's still in lunging distance and the demon knows it. "Busssty asian beautiessss dot com issss one of mine."

Dean sheathes the knife but Crowley knows just how fast Dean can move and how short an amount of time it will take him to break through the bones, ossified from aeons of wear, and pop out his heart.

When Lamia comes in brandishing a cake in one hand and a silver cake knife in the other to find that Dean isn't whittling away at the demon she looks genuinely disappointed. "Oh well," she says putting the cake down on the tray beside the coffee, "let's just go see if Kumiho can be pressed into attacking Zsu Zsu, this place is soooo boring." Then she flounces out, which is something to see in a skin tight red dress.

"Does she scare you too?" Crowley asks as she leaves and Dean is forced to agree. "Oh, cake."

Despite being a demon Crowley turns out to be reasonable company, as long as he stays on his side of the back parlour and doesn't make any sudden moves. He is a demon after all.  
\----------

Dean wakes up alone in his single bed in the corner of the attic walled off to give him a room. He's still groggy and feels like Sam's laptop when it tried to run that Tomb Raider game: it's doing it's damnedest but it's just not strong enough and like the little engine that could it's whirring and grunting and going, "I think I can I think I can, oof maybe I can't, no I can, I think I can I think I can."

That's how Dean feels right now, like he's downloaded some software that's just a little too much for him to run but he's trying anyway. He's naked although he went to sleep in shorts, tee shirt, socks, and the woolly bobble hat because this room's just damn cold. Still, scratching feels so good, when you run short nails through hair and drag. Then arms up until the shoulders pop, feeling the delicious grind of bone and skin that feels like nothing on this earth.

Then he gets dressed enough to consider the walk to the kitchen before his shower.

Dean likes eating before his shower. It makes him feel sophisticated. Besides if he tried to get in the bathroom on this floor for anything more than a well deserved piss he'd never hear the end of it from Smyrna, who vanishes in there with clouds of perfumed steam, and Nocnitsa who mostly keeps to herself, and doesn't speak a word of English, but is not above threatening encroachments into her time with a disposable razor.

Death is in the kitchen.

She's sitting on the counter actually, drinking coffee out of Wayne's favourite mug.

Dean doesn't know how he recognises her as Death just that he does, and that she's white skinned with an infinity symbol around her neck. She's wearing a black sack dress with a tie at mid thigh, striped leggings, a black denim jacket, and flip flops. For some reason this is more disturbing than if she had shown up wearing the white dress she had that day at the hospital. She's not the same woman but he knows her.

"Hey," she says with the most gorgeous smile and salutes him with her coffee cup.

"You here for anyone in particular," he asks pouring himself some coffee.

"Just the coffee," She tells him, "no one makes coffee like Wayne."

"It's because he drinks so much of it." When he goes to the breadbasket for one of the rolls he offers her one. She shakes her head. "Isn't this where you make some amazing dramatic pronouncement about the state of humanity, hand me the second volume of the Thousand and One Nights, because the demon only gave me the first one, and vanish in a puff brimstone?"

"You could pass the cream," she says with a laugh, "the rest of it, it's just gravy." One leg is tucked underneath her, and the other is dangling, kicking back and forth. "I usually come here in the morning, chat with Wayne, and drink some coffee before it gets busy." She rolls her shoulders, apart from her being Death he would totally hit that, but it does make choosing pick up lines more difficult. He's pretty sure that the concept of the Little Death wouldn't be ironic with her either.

"I haven't seen you here before," he tells her.

"Oh well, sucks to be you," she answers with a grin.

"Aint that the truth," he admits grinning back, "everyone suddenly wants to gawp at the Winchester freak show, you too?"

Death just smiles, "Dean, you're just a footnote in a page of a book, in a library I haven't been near in years. These things happen and I'll be there to pick up the pieces. When everything is done I'll put the chairs on the table and lock the door. It's all one to me," she reaches and takes his head in her hand and pulls him over for a lipsticky kiss. She smells somewhat powdery and sweet, and of coffee. She smells like a little old lady. He's sure she could fit like a toy in the palm of his hand. "There, it's all peachy keen." For once, it really is.


	13. In which Dean learns to ask the right questions, but doesn't always get the right answers.

Bilquis is pissed that he went off alone, "Reigert?" She yelled. "Reigert, it's a wonder you're not a pile of dust!" And that was that.

After that Dean is not allowed to go even as far as the bar alone.

It's Wayne that explains it as the two of them carry towels from Lamia's room where she's managed to vomit what remains of the goose, which isn't much, by dislocating her jaw. Dean's sure he could have lived without seeing that. It seems she wasn't pregnant, just digesting. Dean keeps thinking of this book Sammy had as a kid at Pastor Jim's, the Swiss Family Robinson, and there was this picture of this snake eating an onager, he only knows it's an onager because Sammy was insistent it wasn't a donkey or an, snicker, ass and the onager looked seriously pissed, then on the next page is the snake looking like someone tied a knot in it as the Robinson's go forth to kill it.

That is what Lamia was like. She had swallowed the goose whole, including, judging by the mess that hits the towels with the broken bones, the small plastic bag with the giblets.

That is when Dean realises just why Wayne is so pissed. The whole scene is surreal, like something out of a horror movie where the goose remains would jump to life and attack Wayne— forcing Dean to kill it with the towel. In reality, it just lies there while Lamia heaves and her belly flattens before his eyes.

Afterwards they burn the towels and what remains of the goose. Dean stands next to the burning barrel, watches the flames lick, curl, and caress, and wonders if he put his hand into the fire could he lift it out in his palm. "You can't go out alone, you know, not while you're here."

"Why?" Dean asks, he's pretty sure it's a valid question.

Wayne spreads his hands over the fire. It smells like dinner and the bones are popping and cracking in the heat. "It's complicated," he begins, "I mean if you stole some uranium where would you hide it?"

"Why would I steal uranium?" Dean has no idea where this is going.

Wayne's answer is succinct. "To make a bomb, but they have these machines now that can find things like uranium, radiators or something." Dean nods, "so where do you hide it? Where do you put it that their machines can't find it?"

Dean doesn't have an answer for that.

"Somewhere where the machines can't find it. Somewhere where, when they go off everyone expects it. The best place to hide the makings of a nuclear bomb, Dean, is a nuclear power plant, or a hospital. Somewhere that's already radiatoractive."

Dean thinks he should point out that it's radioactive but that would just mean more questions.

"You're the uranium and we're the power plant, Dean."

"Tiger stripes," Dean says finally understanding, "camouflage, hiding it in plain sight."

"Yeah. We're tiger stripes." Wayne admits, "sucks don't it."

"Yeah," Dean blinks the fire flares for a moment, "I'm sure Cas has his reasons."

"Reigert is bad news, Dean," Wayne continues, "real bad news." He rubs his hands as the bones continue to pop and crack. "He's old school bad."

And Dean can't resist poking the beast so he asks, "How bad?"

"I," Wayne starts, "well Death told me this, never make a deal with a psychopomp, she tells me all her gossip, that's what I do, I listen." Dean wants to say when, all you do is talk, you'd reveal the secrets of the universe over a coffee and cookies. "She told me about this guy and he finds the love of his life, this irascible, wonderful waif of a man, and they're happy." Wayne looks guilty but he continues to talk. "I mean really happy, happy ever after happy, and then there is an accident, a car accident and guy one is driving, and his lover is killed and he sees it happen. So far so human right? That's when Reigert stepped in," he takes a deep breath, "When the guy gets out of the hospital his lover, who he has buried, is there, alive and well in the kitchen. And he lives his life with the guy he loved."

"That doesn't sound evil," Dean tells him, "sounds kinda nice."

"Yeah, except that the guy knows he killed him, he knows he's dead and he's responsible, and everyone can see him and talk to him and it's like nothing happened but he knows he killed him, and the lover doesn't, so you know what happens, you know what Reigert does?"

"Drives the man mad so he kills him again?" Dean can see where this is going, where these things always go.

"No," Wayne corrects, "he stops the man going mad, so he has to live every minute of every day knowing he killed the man he loved and that he's not dead, and when he tries to kill himself the lover saves him. The lover gets up every morning and goes to work like it never happened but he's dead. They just carry on but one of them is dead and the other one knows it and yet he can't even drive the other away because it's the true love of his life and he killed him and he's still there."

"That sucks." Dean agrees.

"That's what Reigert does, Dean, he takes what's there and twists it and turns it and then he doesn't let it break because it's better that way, it takes longer. It's like a work of evil art and that guy, when he dies he probably won't even go to hell, because that's not the point, it's the dilemma, the contradiction, the 'why god, why him?' that Reigert wants. He's evil, Dean, old school big bad Ganondorf on the rag evil."

"He has answers," Dean tells him.

"We all have answers, Dean," Wayne looks magnanimous in the firelight, "the trick is to get the right questions."

"Is it real?" Dean's surprised that his voice is a whisper.

"It's all true," Wayne answers, "God's an astronaut, Oz is over the rainbow, and Midian is where the monster's live."

Dean's eyes widen for a moment and then he gets the joke, mock punching Wayne on the arm, "Dude, we nearly had a moment there."

"I know, chick flicks sneak up on you when you're not looking, must be all those girls." He looks at the house, "And fire, Dean, it's not a bad thing."

Dean's voice is small when he asks, "Do you know what's happening?"

"I know what happened to me," Wayne says, "Lamia knows what happened to her, and Smyrna what happened to her. We are all the main characters of our own films, Dean; the trick is to work out the plot to the one you're in. Are you a nuclear bomb hiding in a power plant or a hospital? I don't know the answer to that, sorry." The fire is dying down between them, the towels and goose remnants gone. "I do know that it's all true, everything. It might not be factual, but it's true. Now, we should get inside before my dangly bits decide they're not going to dangle anymore."

"What is Lamia?" Dean asks as they go inside.

"Regretting that goose," Wayne answers and Dean decides not to push it, not now. Wayne has told him too much as it is and it rattles around in his head like a demolition derby. He wonders when it got so crowded in there, when everything became so complicated and he wants more than anything the simplicity of a hunt, and tries not to look back at the dying fire in the barrel behind them.

\-------

Eventually it is Seiglinde who accompanies Dean on a hunt, which turns out not to be a hunt at all, just a blind corner and a very badly placed traffic post. It is obvious that there doesn't need to be a haunting here for it to be a death trap, as Dean wanders around with the EMF metre, hoping that there is something he can kill, Seiglinde sits on the post and waits for him.

A passing Nissan nearly clips him as it runs the corner too fast and is damn near another statistic. Seiglinde looks bored, pissed, and cold, and it's a total bust.

He has to remind himself that there is always one, and as the cars pelt pass, this one is slightly more dangerous than the others.

"Well come along, Brynhilde," he tells the woman on the bollard, "we might as well call it a night."

"I am not Byrnhilde," Seiglinde informs him, "I Seiglinde, Brynhilde has bigger ass." She turns around to show it to him and it's just so ridiculous he wants to laugh but the laughter isn't there anymore.

Instead, there is fire and rage.

Seiglinde, at least, has a pair of tweezers to take the CD out of the player of the anti-Impala, which is a great mercy. As they reach the Queen of Sheba Seiglinde climbs out, "I'll just park her around back," Dean lies, and she grins and believes him, "I'll be right behind you." He thinks he should feel bad for this but he wants answers, or to kill something, preferably both but he'll make do.

\-----------------------------------

At the edge of one of the rougher suburbs is an abandoned mall. Before it was a mall it was a hotel and before that it was a mental asylum. The place is eerie.

Dean knows it's where he'll find Reigert.

He's pretty sure that this "knowing" stuff is related to the mind whammy that Reigert gave him in the park, and he's not nearly stupid enough to think he knows what he's doing but Reigert has answers, if Dean knows the right questions.

Reigert is standing beside the main entrance. The whole place has gone to rot and ruin. It smells damp but there isn't a hint of any kind of animal or insect life about the place.

Reigert looks like he was waiting for him. His features are handsome, if a little blunt, but he has the off-putting angel stillness down. Dean has the knife in his hand but Reigert speaks first. "Tell me, Dean, do you dream of ice," there is no reaction, "earth bearing down on you," he watches Dean closely as he speaks, "or fire?" He smiles but Dean was sure he hadn't revealed a thing. "It doesn't matter, I just wanted to know."

"I want answers," Dean says, fist clenching about the knife handle.

"You come here to my place and presume to make demands of me," Reigert sounds amused, "Silly little creature. This place is mine," he looks around in wonderment, "it had nothing to do with me, but the evil that happened here seeped into the very ground until the firmament itself rejected it and ceded it to me. Nothing happens here without my say so, Dean, nothing." There is no threat in his tone, no bluster, he is as calm and collected as if he is memorising a line from a play. "I am not the kind of angel you want to make bargains with. You have nothing I want."

Dean is almost whining. "I just want answers."

"And knowledge is power," Reigert answers, "Why would I give something like that away for free?"

"You helped me before."

Reigert tilts his head in that strange animal gesture that Castiel uses, the one that suggests that someone has said something that makes absolutely no sense to him, "I told you the hierarchy of Hell for my own purposes. You want to get rid of Lilith and I want her out of my sandbox. Nothing else. If that is all, I'll go."

"Please," Dean is surprised the word escapes his lips. This is a demon, one of the great fallen angels. You don't beg favours from a demon.

"I suppose I could answer one question," Reigert says, "if you will do one thing for me," he adds the caveat, "nothing to risk your immortal soul of course, little Neville." Dean blinks, he's pretty sure that in all the names he's ever used he's never used Neville but Reigert calls him that anyway. "In the basement of this place is a chapel, consecrated and holy, in it is a chancel covered in votives, light them and I will answer a single question. Be quick, I tire of this already."

Dean does as he's asked. It is a chapel, stained glass and everything, and unlike the rest of the asylum-hotel-mall it's immaculate and there are candles everywhere, some burned down past the stub into waxy puddles but hundreds maybe just waiting on a flame. Each one has a small coin embedded in it, in all sorts of currencies, Dean doesn't question it because angels are strange, he takes out his lighter and starts.

He's sweating from the heat of it when it's done and Reigert lingers outside the door like a bad smell, hands in the pockets of his wool coat.

"Thank you. Your truth, Dean, is this, your mother made a deal with Azazel," and Dean is about to say something about how he knows this, Castiel showed him this, "a bad deal and she knew it, but she was a hunter, a good one, better than you will ever be, and she knew more. She knew how to play the game fair and when to tilt the table. When you toss a coin there are two outcomes, heads or tails, your mother threw the coin and hoped it would fall on it's side."

"I know all this," Dean postures.

"You only think you do. Thank you for the candles, now go." The sudden wrongness of the place overwhelms him. He can't leave quick enough because it's crawling through his skin and under it like the taint of Hell. His skin doesn't fit anymore and his hair is itching and his stomach roiling.

The anti-Impala is sitting there, snow on the white hood and he knows he's got gear in the trunk, because he's not stupid enough not to, and as he settles in the passenger seat he thinks about what Reigert said, he doesn't understand a word of it. He puts the car into drive and just goes.

When he turns on the radio, glad Seiglinde finally fixed it, a man's voice goes "Dean, Dean, where are you?" It sort of sounds like Sam. He's angry and pissed and driving too fast and the only answer he can think of is "Fuck Off," and turning the volume knob down so the voice can talk all he wants because Dean's not listening. All the rage and frustration of every little thing since he found Sam trying to get down Ruby's throat is sitting there like bile in the back of his throat. The Hell visions, the fire, the sight of the coins in Reigert's votives and his knowledge.

He's worried he might be sick but instead he just pushes his foot down on the gas and lets the anti-Impala run.

Dean thinks of the man who lost his one true love and was given him back without asking. He wonders what that's like.

He remembers something Pastor Jim said once, in hushed tones to his Dad when he was only a kid "How do you hurt someone who has nothing, John? That one's easy, you give them back something broken." Dean didn't understand it then and wonders what John would have done if, after a year, Reigert had given him back his wife. After he had done those terrible things during that first year and then he'd get into the car and she'd just be there.

Then he gets angrier because Reigert didn't give her back.

He's angry because Reigert found this one man somewhere and fucked with him by giving him someone back and he didn't return Mary.

Dean doesn't remember his mother, not really. He was too small, too young, and then Castiel sent him back to see her as a young woman, before she was his mother and that messed with things. The warm hands and soft words became a hunter's hands and a hunter's words and she sold her son.

He brakes hard, pulls into a field, and stumbles from the car.

The rage is out of control.

He can barely see.

It's a winter field, empty apart from a birch tree heavy with snow and icicles.

They did this!

Azazel did this!

He conned them!

He manipulated them!

And he went to Hell!

And Lilith possesses little girls and just uses them to mess with other people's heads and doesn't even want Hell for itself, she wants it to avenge some insult that only she gets.

And Sammy is bearing the brunt of it! His little baby Sammy, with his huge hands and his floppy hair. And Sammy won't listen because he's too proud and they're all just lying to him. And Reigert saved someone else just because he could. And Castiel's not here and it torments him. And it's too much, it's too much, it's –

"TOO DAMN MUCH." The words force their way out of him.

Fire billows out, spreading around him in an explosion and reaching to the sky. Fire is him and he is the fire and it's everywhere and the relief is palpable, like pissing after holding it in for hours. Fire is everywhere but it's not burning him, it's fire and it's him and it's peace and of all the things that surround him, the fire makes sense.

As he kneels there in the snow the birch tree burns.


	14. In which Dean breaks down and makes the call.

The cabin by the lake is colder than Dean could have imagined because the place has been shut up for the winter and the manager sure as Hell didn't want to open it up for him and the strange huge grey dog, an Irish Wolf Hound, that appeared in the back seat of the anti-Impala.

Dean hasn't been annoyed enough yet by the dog to shoo it off, though it looks kinda familiar and unlike everything else it listens when he talks. He is pretty sure that it's one of those big bads but after the fire he is feeling mellow, like after really good sex, all loose limbed and indulgent. So the dog, who pretty much just sits in the back seat with its tongue lolling out and listens no matter what Dean says, can stay.

It doesn't call him a stupid monkey either.

When the cabin manager asks about the dog in the back seat, the one that hadn't been there a minute before with a collar and a black stone hanging from it that looks like the one on his bracelet, Dean just looks at the dog and says "It's going to be okay, right?" The man just shrugs and unlocks the cabin.

The dog answers to Sammy. He's big, dopey, and kinda floppy haired so he looks like a Sammy. He quickly becomes New Sammy.

New Sammy curls up beside him on the couch and Dean can bury his fingers in the dog's coat. He doesn't complain when the food is greasy or nasty, he just eats it regardless. He also knocks over half-empty bottles of beer and laps up the spill.

It's an easy friendship. When Dean talks, and sometimes he finds himself just talking and talking and talking, like Wayne at his best, New Sammy just lies there on his knee like a big donkey. The dog doesn't matter, it's loyal, it's friendly, and it has breath like chilli cheese fries in the morning.

The first day passes with a quiet lassitude, Dean contemplates the fire that he started, the way it erupted from his skin and how good it felt. He has a brief but pleasant fantasy of setting the entire world on fire just to see it burn down and refuses to acknowledge that he is lonely and scared. The cabin just happened to be where he didn't want to drive anymore.

The second day he goes around the lake, New Sammy loping at his heels, and wanders down to the small town for food. He tries to blot out the image of a burning tree in a field half a day's drive from here.

The third day the rage and the fire starts to creep back in when he is in the diner, New Sammy tied up outside and using big brown eyes to beg food, and he sees a mother and her son. The kid is maybe four, she's blonde and pregnant. It's too much.

Dean breaks the coffee mug in his hand.

White porcelain, black coffee, and red blood streaks the table. The waitress is there with napkins and a new table cloth over her shoulder apologising and shaking her head. She's saying things like emergency room, and might need stitches but all Dean can think about is the image of a blue eyed, impossible blue eyes, angel licking the wound and it receding into his skin.

It doesn't even hurt.

Dean tells her it'll be fine and she takes him through to the rest room to wash it clean. "It looks worse than it is," he assures her and makes sure she doesn't see when he pulls out the last piece of the cup. No stitches needed, just a really big band aid and some peroxide.

She thinks it's because the cup was faulty and he lets her, because it's easier than explaining that a lady with her little boy reminded him of his mom and he couldn't deal with it.

It's easier to clean up blood and coffee than another explosion of fire.

When Dean gets back to the cabin, he phones Sam because he needs to hear another human voice. New Sammy is lying by the fireplace happily gnawing on a plastic bottle he's found, he's wedged it between his front paws and is chewing away at the lid. Dean doesn't care anymore.

Sam doesn't answer but he gets his voicemail, just the sound of his recorded voice helps.

The fourth day it snows so hard that the dog doesn't want to leave the cabin, only goes out far enough to crap, and is back in, shaking snow everywhere. Dean doesn't blame him. If not for the dog he'd stay in bed all day, instead he pulls the quilt down to the couch with the fire built up and sits there, the dog beside him, and drinks beer. He wonders if he has enough to last him through the day as he watches the fire in the grate.

The fifth day he's decided the apocalypse can happen without him. Everyone and everything is a bastard out to get him except for New Sammy.

New Sammy sits there and listens. When Dean finds himself crying, and he can't help himself, hung over drunk and strung out the dog just licks his face and pins him to the couch.

The sixth day he forgets he's hurt his hand when he tries to jerk off, standing awkwardly over the toilet when the bandage catches and then there is no mark on his hand. He goes to snark but there is no one to hear him except the dog and that's just pathetic.

He phones Bobby on the seventh day, just to hear someone else, anyone else, even Bobby calling him an idjut. Bobby answers quickly and then Dean is stuck for something to say so he asks him about looking after the dog and he can hear Bobby rolling his eyes and it makes him feel safe. "Ever hear of a demon called Reigert?" He asks suddenly and Bobby hasn't but he says he'll look him up.

"Bobby," he asks after a very long pause, "did you know my Mom?

"Nah, kid. I heard about her, from yer Dad, of course, and then from other hunters, it's legacy stuff. Yanno, you're smart enough not to listen to what demons tell ya, they lie."

"I know," Dean says sadly and wants to tell Bobby everything that he knows, but he knows nothing and what do you say?

"And angels aint better, kid, they don't lie, but they don't tell the truth either," Dean knows that's true because Castiel tells him outright nothing. Just enough platitudes to keep him hanging on like a damn fish on a hook. "You can't trust 'em."

"I know," Dean says. He wants to continue: I know stuff now, Bobby, I know how to kill them, I don't know how, but I do, and the fire, Bobby, it was glorious and I have this dog with me and I don't know where the fuck it came from and it listens and I watched a woman vomit a bird pellet, giblets and all, but the fire, Bobby, the fire.

He doesn't say anything.

"You still there, kid? You can come here, if you want, you and yer strange friends." Dean wants to smile because for Bobby this is like a huge admission of family, of wanting him to be there.

"I'm good, Bobby, sorry to call you so late."

Bobby snorts an answer about the apocalypse waiting for no man, and says he'll look up the demon for him which Dean has already forgotten that he'd even asked about. "You need to call yer brother, he's going mad with worry."

"I will. . . it's just . . ." He doesn't want to say it out loud because if he says it then it's real and if it's real he can't go back.

"Yeah, I know, kid. Don't be a stranger." Then Bobby is gone and Dean's back in the empty cabin with the dog who has drunk the last of his beer.

He doesn't even look at the time when he calls Sam again, New Sammy lying heavily on his chest with hot beer breath and his tail idly waggling between Dean's knees. He likes this dog. It's been more of a friend to him this last week than anyone. He's also convinced himself that it's just a stray and it's not the dog from his bracelet, although he suspects it's the kind of lie you tell yourself to keep yourself sane.

Sam sounds rough when he answers the phone, too much coffee not enough sleep rough, or the end of a nasty head cold, not right, not like his Sammy. "Sam," Dean says and with it, he says everything and nothing.

"Dean? Oh god, Dean," and the relief is palpable, something Dean can reach out and touch, "Where are you?"

"Do you know what?" Dean says, "I don't know, I'm somewhere. I'm a little lost."

"Do you need me to come and get you?" Sam says and that's the Winchester answer, ride in to the rescue.

"I don't know yet," Dean answers and he's surprised at how honest it is. "I just, well, yeah."

"Are the angels there?" Sam sounds so distrustful, so angry, like it's bile in his throat and not phlegm.

"No, I'm on my own." Dean responds quickly, too quickly perhaps. "Well apart from the dog."

"Where did you get a dog?" Sam asks. It's the first time he sounds like himself, like the Sammy Dean knows.

"That's a really long story, Sammy," he knows that Sam will listen.

"I've got time." That's it, that's the world, that Sam would freeze time, he'd let the world go to Hell to listen to him.

"There's a storm coming, Sammy," it's sad and poignant and it hurts, "Run."

"Is that a warning from the angels?" The vitriol is back.

"They couldn't care about you, Sam. They don't give a shit about anything, they're all dicks, to a man. Maybe not Cas, but he's just a stooge, he doesn't know shit, and it's all bull, Sam, it's all crap piled on shit piled on crap, and you just scratch just a little bit and . . ." he trails off and Sam listens.

He waits. "Man, I've seen stuff. I've seen things, I've seen," he stops feeling naked, exposed, skinless, "C-beams glittering off the Tannhäuser Gate, that's . . ." the words are gone, even cloaked in familiar snark.

"Sam, Mom made a deal," he is surprised at how quiet and broken he sounds, "She," Sam is silent on the other end of the phone, "She," and he trails off again, "Sam," he says finally, "are you still there?"

"Yeah, Dean, I'm here."

"I'm sorry," and Dean doesn't even know why, "I'm so sorry." The tears are there, "I'm so sorry."

"Are you drunk?" That's his Sammy.

"A little. Yes. Maybe, I don't know."

New Sammy breaks the moment with wind, it's a soft whistling sound and then the foulest stench Dean has ever encountered and he's been around, because Sam after a burrito is just toxic but this smells warm and nasty and the dog is lying over him. "Oh god. Oh that's just -- "

"What?" Sam asks worried.

"Damn dog farted," Dean says pulling faces, "Oh that's just wrong." He can hear Sam laughing on the other end, "Don't laugh, it's so thick I can chew it." Sam just laughs harder and even New Sammy, slinking off the sofa in the longest body slide that Dean has ever seen because the dog is huge, probably taller than Sam stretched out, covers his snout with his paws. "You have no idea, dude, that's just."

But it made Sam laugh and Dean would cope with a million of these dog farts for this moment. He doesn't remember the last time he heard Sam laugh. When the charge on the cell phone runs out it's to the sound of Sam laughing.

\---------

The eighth day is Christmas Eve so he leaves New Sammy at the cabin, chewing on an old shoe someone else left behind, to go to the store. The anti-Impala is reliable, whatever else it is.

Wal-Mart is Wal-Mart everywhere and he gets what he wants: pre-packaged microwave meals, Cheetos, whiskey, Twinkies, beer, nuts, Skittles, bread, and a tin of biscuits. He's probably got enough to get him through until the shops open again on the 26th. The coffee is pretty much the only important thing on the list. He snags a bag of dry dog food and some treats when he thinks about it.

He's pushing the cart, half full, out of the antiseptic Wal-Mart lighting into the carpark just in time before it closes.

A tall dark haired man in a long wool coat, Reigert, is standing there and almost obscured by him is another man. Deciding that the angel isn't there for him Dean puts his groceries, such as they are, in the car. When he looks over his shoulder to check on the angel, he sees the gun.

The angel is getting mugged.

Dean doesn't know why he intervenes because the angel can sure as hell take care of itself, but he does. He crosses the carpark and stands behind Reigert just in time for the mugger to raise his gun level, eyes perfectly calm, and fire - into his own skull.

There is a moment when Dean stands there, aghast, coated in blood and brain matter and Reigert simply turns to him. "The timing could be better," Reigert says quietly, and from his pocket pulls a tissue to dab at the splatter on his face, "but I would suggest you call the authorities."

Dean stands there for perhaps one minute before he fumbles for his phone. He's seen many atrocities in his life, he's even perpetrated one or two, but this, he's never seen this before. The mugger literally just shot himself in front of Dean.

Dean is wearing a healthy portion of the would-be criminal on his face, it's cooling in the winter air and he kind of wants to be sick, the other part of him, the soldier, is telling him to cope now, deal later.

It's what Dean does, what he's good at. He copes now, deals later.

His fingers are clumsy on the phone's buttons but he calls 911 and tells them there's been a shooting.

The police don't take long, Reigert is sitting down on a concrete divider and from his pocket he pulls a Twinkie, opening the wrapper and consuming it before the police come.

When the police do arrive, the EMT is covering the body and offering them wet wipes. The angel shows them a badge and introduces himself as John Reigert, of Interpol. He tells them that the mugger threatened to shoot himself if he didn't give him his wallet, not taking him seriously he told him to do it.

Reigert tells them he was just waiting for Dean outside, having a smoke, when the mugger came.

The ambulance driver treats them for shock, because after all it's terrible, and not the kind of thing people should have to see, "Tweakers these days, you don't know what they're capable of. It all looks very straight forward. Can we take a number just in case?"

And that's it.

The police let them go.

Reigert gets into the car and Dean, sure he's shocky, just gets into the driver's seat beside him.

The angel opens another Twinkie, running it under his nose like a Cuban cigar. "Sorry that you had to see that," he pauses and takes a bite, "it was an unplanned inconvenience." He waves the Twinkie to Dean, "Would you like some? I find myself drawn to these things."

"Must be the angel food cake," Dean says before he even thinks about it.

Reigert is silent for a moment before he turns his face to look at Dean, "God forbid."

Dean thinks it might be a joke, more proof of just how far removed from Castiel Reigert actually is.

Dean doesn't laugh.

He imagines he can feel the mugger's blood in his hair. Wedging the wheel between his knees he brings both hands and up and just scratches because his scalp feels like it's alive with insects.

"You left your lighter with me," Reigert says, polishing off the last of the twinkie and putting the wrapper into the door's side ashtray. "I don't want to owe you a favour, even an accidental one." It's a cheap lighter from a highway service station, nothing worth travelling over. It's probably empty anyway, Dean thinks.

The banality of the thought helps him deal with what he just saw.

There was no hesitation in the mugger, he just raised the gun and fired.

"It's nothing."

"No," Reigert corrects him, "It's a token, and I want the air clear between us. I want to owe you nothing. I don't need your worship like the gods in your bracelet. I don't need your love like your shining little grigori bead. You interest me only because you interest Lilith and you will be doing me a great favour when you rid me of her. I have no care for the games of angels."

Dean can't resist pushing, because that's what he does. "And what does interest you?"

"The lost souls are mine," Reigert says, "those that fall between the cracks, those are mine, all else are no longer amusing." He has his hands between his knees, palms pressed together, fingers outstretched and thumbs crossed like a child at prayer. "If Lilith frees Lucifer it will be to kill him and take his place with your precious Colt. That will free the Corruption sealed with him and all of this will be consumed. That disturbs me, for without humanity I will have no more amusement."

"So you want me to kill her."

Reigert's eyes narrow when he smiles. "Now you're thinking like an angel."

"I thought you didn't want anything from me," Dean presses.

Reigert licks the last of the Twinkie crumbs from his lips, "You are going to do that anyway. I am not telling you anything that will make the job easier. Some of us," he shifts his hands between his thighs, "prefer the status quo, not all of us want it to go back to the way it was."

"So if I kill Lilith and save the world I'll be doing the Devil's work."

Reigert's grin is cruel and sharp, "A bitter life lesson, young one – that the aims of Hell and Heaven very often coincide." Then with his voice lingering in the car, Twinkie wrapper uncrinkling itself in the passenger side ashtray, the angel is gone.

When Dean gets back to the cabin he finds Castiel sitting on the couch with New Sammy beside him and the angel is pissed enough that the lights are flickering.


	15. In which Dean learns how very different men and angels can be.

Castiel is pissed.

No, Castiel is beyond pissed. He's gone into that seething kind of rage which doesn't bode well for things in his way, like mountains or dams.

The only thing in front of him is Dean.

Castiel's so angry, Dean notices, that the TV has turned to static and the lights are flickering. Either the electrical substation is having an overload or Castiel is emoting.

The rage hovers about the edges of the angel like a heat haze and as soon as Dean opens the door Castiel is up and across the four steps to the door, pushing the groceries out of the way and although he's half a head shorter than Dean he always gives the impression that he's looking down.

"You were told to stay there," Castiel growls through clenched teeth, "that you would be safe there." Then he leans into Dean and takes three short sharp breaths through his nose, scenting him like an animal. "You stink of demon," and Castiel then pushes him - hard.

Dean is angry too. Anger burns within him like fire because he doesn't understand and he can't just go out and kill whatever it is because of that and he wants to. He wants to make it go away, and the only things around are the dog, who has been loyal this past week, and Castiel.

"You damn angelic types are stalking me, if it's not you it's a prince of Hell. All I need is Frankie Vallie and I'll have a complete set." He turns from Castiel, body language closed off, and lifts the bag of dog food he had been carrying so he doesn't have to deal.

Castiel is quick, quicker than a human and his finger is against the crease under Dean's nose before Dean can register. "How can I protect you," Castiel grates out from between clenched teeth, "if you cannot obey a single order, if you consort with," he takes another deep breath through his nose, "filth."

Dean is just getting angrier and angrier because he hasn't done anything wrong, damn it, and he doesn't know why Castiel is so pissed. Yeah, Reigert's a dick but he hasn't done anything either except eat Twinkies and almost get mugged and . . .

Dean finds his finger waggling in Castiel's face explaining this to the angel.

He doesn't even know what they're saying.

Castiel has his hand on his brand on Dean's arm with the dog food between them like a barrier, and New Sammy has done the sensible thing and high tailed it out of Dodge.

They're screaming at each other, there's some name calling and Dean is up in the angel's face and Castiel isn't backing off an inch and then they're kissing, Dean's not sure who kissed who and he certainly doesn't care, and he just throws the dog food out of the way so that he can dig his fingers into Castiel's arms through the trench.

The bag lands on the floor with a heavy thump and his hands are up under Castiel's ugly trench and Castiel's are around his shoulders and he's kissing back hard, hard enough that Dean can feel his lips bruising but he doesn't care, he wants this, he wants this so much. Dean doesn't want to think, because if he thinks he'll wake up and it will all be a lie and so he kisses and drives his finger tips into the meat of Castiel's back and just accepts.

And Castiel clutches him just as tight, because in dreams that's what dreams do.

Dean knows this isn't the first dream he's had of the angel, and it feels just as real as the others, and in dreams it's safe. In dreams the angel won't fall, he won't be tainted, corrupted and Dean can think of all the nasty dirty things because it doesn't matter.

Castiel turns him in his arms, hands like vices on his shoulders, on his brand, and biting at the back of his neck, taking deep gasping breaths through his nose; his tongue pushing just as hard at the skin under Dean's ears as his fingers are and Dean just takes it because it's good.

And Dean's cursing, a string of obscenities, a foul tirade that is free of blasphemy because that would make the angel stop. As one hand reaches down over his chest, he never wants Castiel to stop.

Dean's hard, diamond hard.

He's so hard he wants to cry and when he feels Castiel's tongue along the edge of his cheek he wonders if he is.

Castiel is using his teeth and it's good, so good, and his hand is against Dean's cock and his own, hammer hard, is against Dean's ass and Dean's grinding back because he can't think. All he knows is sensation and the smell of frankincense and gold and the feel, oh God, the feel of him.

The angel doesn't even unzip him, just that hot and heavy palm against the length of him and Dean's coming, bucking and jerking like he's being electrocuted. Castiel's teeth are in the back of his neck, hard, sucking, and the ring of teeth is like a ring of fire over his spine.

And Dean's grunting because it's not even nearly finished and if it ends the world will spiral away into nothing or he'll wake up. And he's so sensitive, so very sensitive –

too sensitive

too much

too much

Dean can feel the fire on his skin, but it doesn't matter because Castiel's an angel and he can take it.

Dean can do anything and Castiel can take it.

The fire is there, he knows it, he can feel it, licking along his skin, and Castiel just turns him in his arms and bends Dean down to kiss him. Castiel tastes of pennies, gold, and fire. Dean can see the fire in his hands as he reaches up to cup the back of Castiel's head and Castiel is rubbing himself against Dean's thigh and it's too much and Dean's hard again

so soon

too soon!

Hard.

So hard it hurts!

It's too much!

And the fire is there.

The fire is coiling around Castiel who is grinding and grunting and biting, scratching the edges of his teeth over Dean's skin, pulling the flesh and there's no rhythm to his grinding any more, it's desperate and the angel is close.

So close.

And this is where the dream normally ends, Dean knows, but he's fighting to stay asleep, bringing his mouth around to meet Castiel's who tastes of pennies and salt and cinders, because the fire is covering them both now, then Castiel's mouth breaks away and he leans back and gasps as he comes.

And Dean has never seen something so awesome, so wondrous in all his life, as the moment when Castiel throws back his head, covered in flames, hands gripping Dean so hard that they hurt, a good hurt, and comes himself.

And then Dean waits, as the fire boils between them, to wake up, but he doesn't. Castiel maintains that painful grip on his arms and starts to walk them forward, his mouth finding Dean's and pushing with his lips and his tongue as well as with his own body. Dean knows where this is going and hopes - prays - that he doesn't wake up this time either.

The couch against his knees causes Dean to lose his balance and fall backwards onto the afghan, still warm from New Sammy, with Castiel on top of him.

And the angel is cool, even where Dean pulls the shirt from the small of his back up and away from his pants to place his palms flat against the skin there. Dean's glad the couch is there because it means he can hook his legs up and then Castiel is pressed firmly against his crotch, which is still tingly and sensitive, but he can kiss - God can he kiss.

And it's odd how Dean finds it a little hot that Castiel tastes of pennies and salt.

The lights are flashing on and off and the picture on the television is rolling and that's just hot too.

And Dean's decided that this is the very best dream ever.

Because it has to be a dream.

There's no way that an Angel of the Lord kisses like that- like he's trying to force himself down Dean's throat to live inside him.

He's pressing down with his whole body, and forcing Dean into the couch and the fire is twisting up and Castiel is enjoying that. "You come to me, ready," Castiel breathes into his ear, "wearing the blood of your enemy."

And Dean doesn't need to wake up to snap out of that dream quick smart. "Ewww," he says pushing the angel away, "just gross." He starts scratching at his scalp, remembering the blood there.

But Castiel just looks hungry.

"Oh dude, that's gross." Dean says as he finds flecks of dried blood under his nails.

"Your mistake is fundamental," Castiel is growling, so deep in sex need, which the blood has shaken out of Dean entirely, he can barely think "we are not human." The angel reaches for him again.

"It's not like I don't want it," Dean says shirking his grasp to stand up. His legs are rubbery, "but this isn't a good thing, we shouldn't."

Castiel doesn't walk, he glides, and his hands are hot and hard and there is something about him, that has nothing to do with his flesh, that makes Dean feel small in his presence. "But we are," he says and then he leans in to take another deep breath of him, licking at the line of his jaw in one broad swipe.

"No, no, no, no, no." Dean backtracks but he can feel Castiel's saliva as if it burns. "I'll damn you."

Castiel laughs, and when he speaks his voice is growl in the back of his throat "Is that all that you were waiting for? Is that why you remained aloof from me? Foolish, foolish, Dean," and he sounds fond, "you belong to me. Now give me what is mine."

Dean blinks, once, twice and then a third time as his brain struggles to process. "I have come to you in dreams waiting for this moment, when you would share your flesh with me. I can see that you want this, so why do you hesitate?" And of course Castiel is direct about it.

"Those dreams, fuck, man, I – "

"I want you," Castiel tells him, voice cracking with lust and his eyes are burning, "and you came to me, anointed with blood and lust thick about you. You came to me with fire and flame, baptised in your power and blessed me with your seed."

And Dean is torn, because half of him is conceding that that's just damn hot and it's what Castiel deserves. The other half is reassuring him that it's strange and more than a little disgusting. He's also pissed that Castiel has been moving him around like a game piece, and fucking him in his dreams because that's just taking advantage and it gives Dean the impetus to stop this.

So he stands there, jacket rucked down over his shoulders, pants wet and cooling against his overly sensitive crotch. "I'm going to take a shower," he tells the angel, "and then – if I decide I'm still talking to you – then we can do this properly."


	16. In which Dean tastes the smallest part of heaven.

In Castiel's arms, Dean sleeps.

He knows that he is dreaming, he can feel Castiel behind him, hard and cool, with a soft stomach, one that suggests an easier life than Dean has had, and the feel of his breath stirring the short hairs at the back of his neck.

Despite that Dean knows he is dreaming, he sees Hell.

It is not Hell as Dean remembers it.

Perdition is laid out as a giant map upon which place names are written. He has seen this kind of map before, when he met Horace in a dream America looked like this.

He sees the Pain Mills where he was held with the knowledge that they are vastly changed since he was there. When Dean looks closer he sees Lys, the beautiful demon who hurt him so often, is sitting at a window, her hair is loose but she looks tired. She wears a heavy, shapeless, black dress that covers her. Her face is drawn and when she notices him, she looks up. It seems like she's crying. "I'm sorry," she says and Dean jerks backwards away from it, back over the map where he sees the name Effrul.

Dean turns, aware that he is flying but also able to feel the cabin sheets and Castiel behind him, his arms pinning him and yet he feels totally free.

He sees a great city, built in a circle inside the confluence of a mighty river. The city is raised in stages, like pictures he has seen of the hanging gardens of Babylon, and there are nine circles inside it. For some reason it reminds him of the city in the Lord of the Rings but he knows what this place is - it's the great city of Dis.

Dean debates that he could get closer and just thinking it he sees the city, he sees how greatly it is defensible, both from inside and out. He sees that it is a great fortress built into the hill as much to keep something in as it is to keep everything else out.

He climbs the hill to the great city where there is a great citadel.

At the top of the citadel, there is a great seven-pointed star tiled into the floor and with a throne on each point.

Reigert sits on one throne and when he sees Dean he smiles and clearly says, "Seven rings for dwarven Kings in their halls of stone," then he salutes and is gone as quickly as Dean noticed him.

He continues to climb the tower where there is a great statue with three giant heads carved into the very firmament, each one pointing in another direction.

All three heads are screaming.

Dean can feel Castiel's fingers on his shoulders tugging him back, but it's a dream, just a dream so he does not pull away.

He steps into the screaming mouth of the nearest face and he can hear Reigert whisper, "Three rings for elven lords under the sky."

At the centre of the room is a stone disc that looks kind of like a manhole cover. If manholes were made with demonic stones and carved with evil looking sigils.

As soon as he sees the disc he is sucked towards it, and Castiel's fingers dig in trying to pull him back, but he goes in anyway – down, down, down.

There is a roiling black sea licking up the walls of the great pit, and it's wrongwrongwrong!, and there are great sigils all over the walls, hundreds of them, some are cracked and broken.

A great statue is carved into the wall, just above the inky black wrongness. A great figure with a beautiful face covered in the oily tar and withered branches. He, and it is a he, wears a great crown and holds a spear that impales the soupy Dark and the Dark pulls back from it.

The spear is powerful and he can feel it, thrumming, holding the great dark down. This is the Darkness of the cosmic made manifest and the angel holds it down.

It is an angel, Dean can see the wings now, razor sharp sticking from the walls, weapons in their own right, pointed down. The scene is like something from one of Sam's Tomb Raider games: this great big statue and a swirling ocean of wrongness and he knows, just knows, that it's much worse than fatal.

The statue, with a exhalation of dust and a great grinding of stone against stone opens it's eyes and they are golden until a black film crosses them.

Dean wakes up.

He's back in the cabin, Castiel is on top of him, leaning down, and all he can see are those eyes, Castiel's impossibly blue eyes and he blinks trying to force the dream out.

Castiel smothers it down with a kiss.

Dean is still unsure if it's a dream, because angels of the lord generally aren't this horny, and he's sure it said something about this being bad, even if they weren't two men but he's happy his brain has disengaged it's porn to reality filters because this is good shit!

And Castiel doesn't just kiss.

Castiel kisses like a flood.

Castiel kisses like a mountain up heaving itself to worship at the feet of Mohammed.

Dean tries his best to put that thought out of his mind because it smacks of being Holy. Dean doesn't do Holy.

But Castiel has his hands in Dean's hair and is tugging just enough to pull his mouth up, closer to his own, and the angel is hard.

He's rubbing that hardness against Dean's belly, which is quivering under him as Dean struggles to breathe into the mouth above him.

And Dean can feel every cell of skin, every fiber of hair under Castiel, who is almost but not quite human hot. Hot with passion, but not human heat.

And Castiel's hands.

The angel's touch resonates.

This will be the third time, Dean thinks, or maybe the fourth. He's not quite sure whether or not to count the first encounter as one or two, because he'd definitely got two orgasms, but Castiel only came once, and they both came again in the shower, with Dean's foot on the toilet seat and his face against the tiles.

And the delicious shooting pain from the cramp in his foot, up his leg to where Castiel held him open, running his cock along the cleft of Dean's ass as the water sluiced down between them making lakes in the bottom of the bath, and he was up on his toes, pushing Dean's face forward into the blue bathroom tiles.

Dean wants to mention the lotion in his bag, stolen from all those high-end hotels Castiel took him to. He wants Castiel to lift up his thighs with those dry hands and to fuck him, but the way Castiel is rubbing up against him is good too and Dean is making those noises again, the ones he can't decide if they're good or cramp.

Castiel takes Dean's wrists and pins them over his head, biting down over his Adam's Apple as if he's going to rip his throat out with his teeth, and his hand on Dean's wrist hurts just a bit, but it's a good pain.

And Dean knows he's going to have one hell of a hickey there.

And if this is what happens when he disengages his porn to reality filters he's never re-engaging them ever again.

Hell, he's not getting out of bed again if he can help it.

Castiel fucks like an animal. He just leans into Dean and ruts and he smells so good, like musk and frankincense and myrrh and his touch is golden.

He hitches up Dean's thighs so he can rub against the cleft of his ass, lubricated only by sweat, and Dean is making those wailing noises, that he doesn't believe when he hears them in porn, because he wants Castiel to touch him and then Castiel pulls back.

Castiel's pupils are blown and his lips swollen.

Dean licks his mouth raggedly.

"Will you receive me?" Castiel asks and Dean thinks it's the most stupid question ever.

"Fuck yes," he growls, "lotion, in the bag, now."

Castiel just smiles, lips kiss swollen, eyes almost black with lust and then he spreads his wings with an almighty crack.

They are completely different than the shadows he saw that night in the barn, they literally rip free from the angel's back, covered in some slick clear goo and that's kinda fucked up and kinda sexy in all one go. The goo has splattered the walls around the bed and Castiel bends the tip of his wing in and rubs his fingers in it.

Dean doesn't know what the goo is but it's slick and behaves like astroglide, and it tingles marvelously. It fizzes on his skin and that's just . . . he thinks he could come from it rubbing at him, and then Castiel pushes his fingers, coated with it, inside.

Dean arches and makes a noise that Chasey Lain would be proud of.

And then Castiel's mouth is against the rough hairs on the back of his thighs, one kiss, a dragging lick, a soul deep bite and then with a jerk, like Dean is a plush animal, he's inside him and thrusting without care if he breaks or tears. His wings are outspread, he's using them to balance, and Dean can see them, can reach around and touch the place where they erupt from Castiel's shoulder blades.

What surprises Dean when he comes is not that he does so quickly, but how he managed to last that long.

\--------------------

When Dean wakes up Castiel is sitting, naked, across the room, with a book in his hands. He looks genuinely distraught. "I have wronged you."

"What this whole sexing me while I'm dreaming thing?" Dean says sprawled in the bed, pretty much determined not to move now that he can see Castiel, " 'Cause I aint complaining."

"You are not dreaming," Castiel answers him quickly. "I told you to read this," he holds aloft the Book, "Matthew told me that I was incorrect, that humanity was the problem, but in my arrogance I didn't listen to him."

Dean instantly switches from reeling over the whole not-a-dream-sex to an instant and seething jealousy of "Matthew."

"And who is Matthew?"

"I am Matthew." Castiel tells him, "and he is me," he sees the way Dean's face is a barely hidden sneer. "It is complicated."

"Things are only complicated when people don't want to explain shit," Dean answers, pulling the blanket up around his armpits, and then pats the bed for the dog to jump up. He suddenly wants New Sammy there.

"It is not that," Castiel sighs, and pauses, "How can I explain when you do not have a frame of reference with which to comprehend?" The angel lowers his immaculate blue eyes to look at his feet, "it would be easier to explain evil to a flower."

"Try me." Dean manages to get the noise from the back of his throat. New Sammy jumps on the bed moving across him with an, "Oof," until he is sprawled over Dean's lap, boneless on his back with his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

"You have corrupted even the hunt," Castiel says. He lowers his eyes and then goes to speak and stops again. "I," the words desert him.

"When I," he stops again, "In Hell I was assured by my own arrogance that you could see me, that you could hear me so I did not make provision." He's staring at Dean with that lancing gaze that feels like a sword thrust. "It was my error. I did not prepare a host, and when I took you from Hell, I was undone. I was laid bare and I lay in the sunlight to lick my wounds and clear the taint from my grace." He's fumbling for the words, staring at Dean, fixing him in place.

"When I came to find you I believed, in my arrogance, that you would hear my voice and I sought you out. I almost killed you just by calling your name."

Dean remembers that clearly.

"I went to find a host vessel, I went to the graveyard so that I might knit together the flesh that I needed that we could communicate, but you called me before I was done." He looks at the floor again. "The flesh was lost," he stopped, "and still you called me and called me."

Castiel raises his face, crystalline eyes and softly handsome face, hair truly fuckswept into place and scratches all over him. "I found Matthew, a prophet, who could look upon me without repercussion. A normal man would be obliterated trying to hold my grace, I needed a prophet. I appeared before him and told him I had need."

"You mind fucked him," Dean accuses.

"No," Castiel is clear on that, "I went to him in the asylum and told him I had need that I would borrow his body only for one thing, to explain to you."

"Bang up job of that you did," Dean snarks into New Sammy's fur.

"He argued with me, he said you would not trust me if I appeared again in a second form, if I created flesh for myself." Dean raises an eyebrow at that, his fingers stopping with their scritching. "He offered me his body. I did not understand what it would mean. I do not think any of us did."

"Why?"

Castiel takes a deep breath before continuing, "No angel has ever possessed a prophet for more than a very short period." He frowns, "We are fragile in these forms, restrained and vulnerable. He bleeds into me and I into him, soon neither Castiel nor Matthew will exist as they were. We shall be one."

"So you've consumed this Matthew?" Dean is horrified, at their worst a demon leaves the mind underneath.

"No," Castiel says, "I knew that I could not make you understand, we are, not I, not he, but we."

Dean's not sure how to interpret that.

"I am Matthew Holland, I know his life as if it were my own. Matthew Holland is me," he hits his chest, "a man who spent his life seeing angels and demons and being told he was corrupt, when in truth his very purity corrupted me." Castiel takes a deep, wobbling breath through his nose. "I wish I could explain to you, but the words are not there."

"Try German, they have a word for everything."

Castiel asks hopefully. "Can you speak German?"

"No."

The angel frowns. "I thought that this would help," he says waving the Book, "and again my arrogance has hurt you, I was told that it was corrupted by time and man but I did not believe." He takes another deep breath, "No. I did not want to believe." He stands up, raising himself to his full height, seeming so much larger than his frame. "Would you trust me?"

"Why should I?" Dean asks. "You don't give me answers."

Castiel blinks, it's a human gesture. "You have asked none of me."

"How about this for a starter, Cas, what the fuck is going on?"

"You are lying in bed with a warrior of the Hunt and I am talking to you." Castiel explains.

Dean makes a noise like a wounded animal. "Why is it every supernatural son of a bitch in the midwest suddenly wants to be my friend?"

"Because I pulled you from Hell."

"Why?"

"Those were my orders."

"Why?" Dean knows he sounds like a petulant four year old.

"I do not question." Castiel tells him and it's the truth and Castiel is trying so hard to explain but the answers aren't there or Dean doesn't understand them or as Castiel said, it is complicated. "I have faith."

Dean runs both hands through his hair. "Why didn't Heaven see Azazel? Why did they let this happen?"

That Castiel has an answer to and Dean knows he's not going to like it. "We did not consider him worth our attentions," he answers, "he was not a great power and we did not understand he was making a bid for the Seven. The power struggles of Perdition are the business of the pit."

"So you just let him. You let him!" Dean is angry again and the dog slopes off the bed, "This God of yours saw how fucked up this world was and he just stood back and did nothing."

"No, Dean," Castiel says, his faith putting him on firm ground, "He created you. He created the hunters who protected humanity; he created the blood line from which you are descended." His eyes are shining wetly as he talks, his lips chapped and dry, swollen still from the night's sex.

"And God did speak 'My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.' The sons of God walked the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. These were the champions of the Lord against those creatures of Corruption that did rise against them."

Castiel steps closer to Dean

"And so it was that the champions of God, those sons of man and of God did pursue those creatures of Corruption and they burned with fire all the cities where they dwelt . . . and killed the Kings of Midian, both man and beast."

Dean's angry and he clearly doesn't understand, and Castiel is just throwing biblical quotes at him so he makes an angry harrumphing sound and with the dog behind him turns over and pretends to sleep so he doesn't have to listen anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when I wrote the scene with Castiel's wings I knew, and then referred to in chat, exactly what I wanted  
> and referenced a scene in an anime no one had heard of let alone scene  
> and it was a scene that stuck and when castiel brought out his wings I knew it was what I wanted
> 
> this is that scene
> 
> http://youtu.be/nuHtvaKt7hQ
> 
> it's a bit disturbing so bear that in mind


	17. In which Dean realises just how very little he knows.

Castiel's voice is a soft breath against his ear; Dean is not even sure when his head found its way onto the angel's chest. Castiel is holding a Bible in one hand, reading it softly aloud, and Dean is surprised because if he didn't know better then he'd swear blind that Castiel is doing it to get further into his pants.

"Set me as a seal upon thine heart, and as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame." His breath is soft and delicate, not quite warm enough to be a human.

The angel's fingers are running over the hand print on Dean's shoulder and it's probably the most arousing gesture Dean can think of, but it's totally innocent. "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be condemned."

Dean sighs, his breath cascading over the angel's nipple, he watches it tighten slowly. Castiel smiles and starts again, "Pone me ut signaculum super cor tuum ut signaculum super brachium tuum quia fortis est ut mors dilectio dura sicut inferus aemulatio lampades eius lampades ignis."

He is repeating the passage in Latin and Dean suspects that if the angel so desires he will repeat it in all the languages of man, and a few others besides. "Atque flammarum aquae multae non poterunt extinguere caritatem nec flumina obruent illam si dederit homo omnem substantiam domus suae pro dilectione quasi nihil despicient eum."

The reading makes Dean feel cherished in ways that are new and uncomfortable.

Then Castiel chuckles and chooses another passage, "My beloved is all radiant and ruddy, distinguished among ten thousand. His head is the finest gold; his locks are wavy, black as a raven." He pauses. "His eyes are like doves beside springs of water, bathed in milk, fitly set. His cheeks are like beds of spices, yielding fragrance. His lips are lilies, distilling liquid myrrh." A smile crosses Castiel's face as he continues, "His arms are rounded gold, set with ivory work, encrusted with sapphires. His legs are alabaster columns, set upon bases of gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as the cedars. His speech is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable."

"Dude," Dean says doing his best to discharge the situation, because it means that this is going to end in sex and he's sort of sore and sort of cranky and tired, "are you porning the Bible?"

"I do not need to," he says and slips his palm over the mark, "these passages already are lines of passion between a man and his wife."

"Oh yeah," Dean snarks with a soft laugh, "makes me the wife."

"I am reading the woman's part," Castiel answers surprised at the accusation, "there is nothing about you that is womanly. I have looked."

Dean chuckles. "Are you saying that you're my wife?"

Castiel answers, "Do you want me to be?"

And Dean laughs, he's happy – happier than he can ever remember being. He is lying with his face against Castiel's diaphragm listening to the angel speak, his hand running over the curve of his shoulder and arm.

Dean is waiting for the bubble to shatter.

He is waiting for Castiel to turn on him, to leave, because everyone does, sooner or later, even if they're lying in bed now as Castiel reads the Bible to him.

Castiel will go, because they always do.

Everyone leaves him, so Dean has learned to snatch time. Moments with Sammy between hunts, conversations with his dad over supper or beer, or even mornings with Cassie back when he hoped he might still be normal.

They all left, everyone he cared about, and now there is an angel in the bed with him, reading to him from the Bible.

If Dean didn't need it so much it would be fucking hilarious.

The universe has given him something beautiful and wondrous and it's only a matter of time before he breaks it, grinds it underfoot and goes back to Hell.

It's where he belongs anyhow.

Castiel stops reading, tilts that inscrutable head of his and then presses his finger to the indentation under Dean's nose, in that damningly claiming way of his, that he secretly loves. "Do not think so," he says, "you belong to me and I would not have you doubt me."

"Don't read my thoughts," Dean murmurs.

"Why?" Castiel asks, all innocence and light, "you belong to me, so all that you are belongs to me. That includes the thoughts of your head. You doubt of me and I would not have you doubt me. I would have you love me."

Dean knows how to answer that, "Again, I'm still kinda sore. I mean you were kinda rough, and I liked it but..."

Castiel laughs, "There is more to love than carnal pleasures," the angel reassures, "Love is a great mountain that bows down for a small sapling to allow the sun to fall on it." He runs the very tip of his fingers along the curve of Dean's mouth, letting his fingers dip into the philtrum softly before continuing onwards. "Love is a glacier that pauses in its way to allow a fish to pass." He runs his finger over the scratchy almost stubble where Dean needs to shave.

"Love is," he stops, "once, when the world was newer than it is today, there was a couple who were old and very poor, but incredibly rich in love. Every day the man told his wife how much he loved her and his wife assured him that it was reciprocated." His hand cups Dean's ear, down over the neck and to his shoulder. "One day to their small farm an angel landed, wounded from battle."

Dean shifts on the bed, he kinda wants to hear the story and kinda doesn't. Against his face he can hear the slow steady thumping of Castiel's heart. Slow, too slow. It's reassuring, otherworldly and inhuman. Dean's breath washes hot and humid over Castiel's cool skin.

"They did not know him for an angel, thinking him a soldier, tired and drawn from his travels and they welcomed him into their home. The couple gave him all of the food from their table to make poultices for his wounds. They slaughtered their only goose to make grease for his lesser cuts. When he asked them why, they said that he was young and had his whole life ahead of him, when they were old and had each other, and they had suffered hard winters before."

Dean listens raptly, watching the way the few dark hairs around Castiel's nipple sway in his breath. He contemplates putting his mouth there, running over it with his tongue, and then biting, just hard enough so that Castiel huffs an exhalation that makes Dean's stomach flip with desire. That grunting groaning noise that speaks of hungers that are truly ancient.

Castiel smiles at him, and that inquisitive fingertip taps across his nose, marking his freckles one by one. It's a wondrous and humbling sensation, that Castiel knows Dean and adores him so devotedly.

"When he was well again, the Angel prayed to God that he might reward them, for they had given him all that they had, and all that they were and asked nothing in exchange. And God allowed him to grant unto them one wish and one wish only."

Dean thinks he can see where this is going, but he's been wrong before.

"So he returned to them, and told them that he was a great angel and that for their kindness and sacrifice they had earned a gift, one great act of magic. They refused it."

Dean understands that, they didn't want anything that the angel could give them because God didn't give you what you wanted he gave you what you needed.

"But the Angel was insistent, and so they thought about it, for a night and a day where the Angel gave them the manna of Heaven so that they might not know hunger, and the ambrosia of Heaven so that they might not know thirst and eventually the couple made a decision."

Dean tilts his face into that questing fingertip, towards those faithful blue eyes that weigh upon him so heavily.

"They asked only that they never be parted, that when one died that the other should fall at that same moment. And the Angel smiled. He took them to a small hill that overlooked their farm, it was the first place that the sun fell onto in the morning, and had them hold hands. Then he said words of great magic and power and they were bound together and transformed into great tree, overlooking their land in the light of God's love. That is love, my Dean."

Dean feels the story like an ache in his chest, and then at that last phrase his heart hiccups, because Castiel calls him mine.

The angel looks down and smiles, running the pad of his thumb, against the grain, over brown eyebrows.

"Are you mine?" Dean asks and Castiel's eyes soften, the blue of great Arctic ice that has never seen the Sun's softening rays and darkens to match the colour of the arctic sea. He doesn't answer, not in words, instead he places his hand against the brand on Dean's arm and smiles.

***

It takes two days, days of love and luxury and only getting out of bed to let the dog out and feed it, before Castiel finds someone capable of giving Dean answers that he might understand.

Dean wakes up to find Castiel dressed in his clothing and he feels that familiar comfortable swirling in his gut. Dean almost wants to groan and bury his head under the pillow and drag the angel back to bed, as long as Castiel is with him Dean can let the entire world go to Hell. He doesn't though.

He gets out of bed and showers quickly, putting on the last of his clean clothes. Castiel has packed everything, including the dog food by the time he's ready. The angel has even worked out a makeshift leash for New Sammy out of a bit of rope but the dog looks unconvinced. He digs his heels in until Dean takes the rope from Castiel and even then, he doesn't look like he wants to go out into the snow until the back door of the anti-Impala is open and then he's up in a crisp clean motion and making himself a bed on the fleece.

It makes Dean snort out a laugh.

Then with a look that suggests, "Onwards Jeeves!" New Sammy waits for the car to start and Castiel, wearing Dean's clothes, gets into the passenger seat. "Wyoming," he says, "Cheyenne, Wyoming."

Dean thinks that it's as good a place as any and starts to drive.

***

When the anti-Impala pulls up to the large house Dean is convinced that some sort of Heavenly mojo was worked on the car because he was sure it couldn't have made the drive.

"This is the house of Reader Benjamin Constantine," Castiel tells him, "he is amongst the foremost experts in the Divine, but I am told he can be a bit abrupt."

"Cas," Dean asks, "isn't that the word you used to describe Uriel?"

Castiel just smiles.

When a woman opens the door she's wearing a heavy winter coat and has a mesh bag over her arm, "You're late," she says pushing past them, "he's inside, he's not eaten and don't let him break anything. I can't take him anywhere. I'll be back in an hour." And away she goes like a bat out of hell.

"Okay," Dean says and steps inside the house.

The boy standing at the top of the stairs in a pair of Speed Racer pyjamas is at most nine or ten with black hair and pale blue eyes. "You're not my babysitter, so who the fuck are you?" He eyes them up and down through the railings, "You're an angel," he tells Castiel, "so you can get right the Hell out, last angel here stole a tea set and three books." Aziraphale Dean mouths knowingly. "And unless the agency has started up scaling it's work ethics you're either a hunter or a serial killer."

Dean salutes the boy, "and you're a smart mouthed little fucker, aren't you?"

"And you've got a dog of the wild hunt on a leash and an angel to your right," the boy juts out his jaw, "I'm Ben Constantine, I'll repeat, who the fuck are you?"

"I'm here to talk to your Dad," Dean says biting his tongue, "I'm Dean Winchester, and you were right, this is Castiel, an angel, so where's he?"

"You're about a thousand years too late for that conversation," the boy says with a laugh, "and Monkey is off for the holiday. So it's me or Mrs Doyle when she comes back."

Dean mumbles, "If she comes back." He would not be surprised if the harried looking woman who met him at the doors didn't come back.

"There's casserole in the oven, I'll be down right after Kim Possible."

 

The house is full of books, literally. In some places, doors have been removed to show a sort of maze made from books— hardback, paperback, even a few old looking manuscripts. In at least one of the downstairs sitting rooms, the windows are boarded up with piles of books. It's the kind of place that would make Bobby cream in his pants. "And he noticed that there were three missing?" Castiel says looking around, "he must truly be blessed."

"Are you sure that's the right guy," Dean asks going into the kitchen. There isn't a coffee pot but there is a kettle and a bottle of slow brewed instant. It's on quite a high shelf so obviously the kid isn't allowed anywhere near it. There is no caffeinated or sugary soda in the fridge and no candy at all. Dean has some in the car if he wants to bribe the boy later.

"He is," Castiel says and frowns at the two pots left to soak in the sink.

Dean blinks as Castiel undoes the cuffs on Dean's plaid shirt and rolls up the sleeves. He actually starts to wash them. "Dude," he protests, "it's not your house."

Castiel just continues to wash up. Then just to rub it in he starts to dry them, that done he investigates the casserole in the oven.

"D'ya know the problem with angels," Ben says from the doorway, "they're always into anything. Like it's some God given right."

Castiel looks at him and laughs fondly, holding nothing against the child. "And you would be the one to know." He answers, closing the oven door. "If you wish we can dispose of this and replace it with something that might pass as food."

Ben smiles. "You and me might get along, Angelei, maybe." He narrows his eyes, "arrangements can be made for pizza."

Dean opens his cell as Ben continues, "Not that you need to eat, and you sure as Hell aint getting any tea, Aziraphale stole the pot." He pulls out one of the pine chairs around the table, "and there's juice in the fridge. I'd like some now." Castiel seems indulgent because he takes one of the glasses he has just dried and pours some orange juice.

Dean puts his hands in his jean pockets, giving up on finding a pizza place. "Look kid, it's not that I don't believe you but I'm pretty sure I'm looking for someone older."

Ben's smile is cruel and his dimples just make it more disturbing. "There really aren't many people older than me." He tells them and takes the juice from Castiel. "Ask Mrs Doyle when she comes back, or Father Maltheus." And that causes him to laugh and laugh as if it's the very best joke.

"Do not tease him so," Castiel tells the boy, "he is young yet."

"He's a brat," Dean snarks.

"Yes, but he is the one you're looking for, he has been in the service of the church for over an age."

Ben just looks at Dean and sticks his tongue out.


	18. In which Dean discovers that looks are often very deceiving and things are very rarely what they seem

Ben Constantine is a holy terror, especially since he is under the thrall of the church. He decides that the Salisbury steak that Mrs Doyle has made for him isn't fit for rats and throws a tantrum that would make Veruca Salt proud. It makes Dean wonder if there aren't perks in forever being the baby. Castiel takes one look at the plate of mystery meat and Dean regrets being unable to find a pizza flyer.

He's not sure he would have eaten it either.

As children he and Sam were often left on their own for long stretches of time, but every now and again there was someone that John felt comfortable enough leaving his kids with. It was usually Pastor Jim or Bobby, Caleb once, but one time he had left them with an old Houdun witch in Baton Rouge.

At the time Dean hadn't known she was a witch, though he suspected that she might have been, not because she practised magic but because she was a mean old bitch.

She taught Dean several important lessons, one it was better to mend than buy new and the same stitches used to darn a sock would do skin. She taught him how to drink, although he was about eight at the time. And she taught him how to cook several cheap filling meals quickly.

John had never known about this, because Dean already felt kinda like his wife. So, when it was just Dean and Sam sometimes it was Spaghetti-O's and sometimes it was a homemade tuna casserole. Their Dad just thought the chicken soup was Sam's favourite.

Dean quickly finds what he needs in the pantry cupboard: a tin of tuna, a tin of condensed chicken soup, and a bag of pasta shells. From the draining board he takes the glass oven dish, pours pasta into the bottom, then adds the tuna and the chicken soup followed by a cup of water, and then he slaps it all in the oven. "Takes about forty minutes," Dean tells them. Both Castiel and Ben seem surprised that he can cook, even something that basic. "It's good eating. If you've got any chips we can crush them to make a topping."

"I don't like tuna," Ben says regaining his equanimity and disdain at the same time.

"Tough, it's tuna or that." He looks at the slimy mystery meat on the plate.

"Tuna it is then," Ben chirrups happily. "Can I have some coffee?"

Castiel is the one to look around the kitchen, at the severity of it, and the fact that every instrument capable of making coffee is out of his reach and says, "No, have more juice."

The conversation gets stilted and awkward then because no one is sure what to say. Ben has been left alone with strangers by his housekeeper, and they have no idea what to say to entertain a child.

"So," Ben says, "hunters and angels don't come around just to cook for me and drink all my tea, and tell Azriphael I want that pot back by the way, so what brings you to Wyoming?"

"Why are you in Wyoming?" Dean asks, "I mean, if you're this big dude on campus." He's still obviously sceptical.

Castiel answers before Ben can. "I was told that he told the Pontiff to place his triregnum upon the Great Snake of Kundalini." The words are chosen carefully and although Dean recognises the language as English most of it passes him by.

"No," Ben corrects, "I told the Pope to take his crown and shove it so far up his," Castiel covers the boy's mouth before he can finish.

Dean wants to snicker. He's glad he doesn't have to look out for this kid, but in the short term he's fun. "I can see how that worked out for you." He looks around the house, "not bad really, nice house, all the books you can read."

"Invaded by angels and hunters and fed that," he looks at the plate, "instead of the delicious Italian I used to get in the Vatican, you'd think they'd have forgiven me by now." Ben gets up from the chair. "So I get the impression you're not here to feed me, what do you want?"

Castiel's answer is abrupt, "Dean has questions that I cannot answer. Genesis and the Sons of God."

Ben makes an "O" shape with his mouth, then he looks Dean up and down critically, "This guy, really?" He purses his bottom lip, "I always thought that they'd be," he narrows his eyes, "well, bigger."

Dean just looks between the two of them.

"Eats a lot?" Ben asks going to the fridge to get more juice and then just staring at it, "tremendous appetite for the other ...?" He lowers his head, "Well I'm going to need some Mountain Dew." He sharply turns to Dean and accuses, "What? I'm not old enough to drink."

***

Ben has built himself, in one of the spare rooms that he refers to as the dining room although no one could eat in there for the mountain of books, a fort made from said with books. From within the fort comes a series of crashes and bangs and one of the pillars topples outwards, but the books are packed so tightly that rather than collapse they just sort of lean against another pile which gave up the ghost years ago.

"What are you doing in there?" Dean asks when he comes back with the case of Mountain Dew.

"I'm channelling the spirit of Edgar Allen Poe," the pile of books replies, "what does it look like I'm doing?"

Dean drops the soda as a single slippered foot appears in a gap. He takes the opportunity to snatch at it, pulling Ben out by his ankle and then holding him aloft as he flops about trying to get back in. "Let me down you," he pauses his face screwing up and getting redder by the moment, "piicha."

"Watch your tongue," Castiel says like a thunder crack from the doorway, "there is no need for that kind of language, it is disgraceful, someone of your age should know better."

"Yeah," Ben says from where he's hanging, "never curse in front of an angelei unless you want your mouth washed out."

Dean is left wondering what the insult could have been because Castiel only chides him for blasphemies. He lowers the boy to the floor who immediately goes to scamper back into the book-fort so Dean just grabs him by the back of his Speed Racer pyjamas. "Let me down you," he pauses again, "Schwanzlutscher."

"Look, kid, you can call me all the names you can think in that fancy ass language of yours but I aint letting you go in there, it's dangerous, it's like Jenga for librarians." The kid is too angry to laugh at what Dean considered quite a funny joke. "Now what does the book you want look like and I'll get it because if the books fall on me I'll just be badly hurt and not squished."

There is a tirade of curse words from the squirming child. "Father, forgive me," Castiel mutters and presses two fingers to the boy's forehead. Ben is asleep before he has removed his hand.

Dean goes to say something but instead hefts the boy up against his shoulder to carry him to whichever bed belongs to him.

It turns out to be a racecar with dinosaur bed spread and a very bedraggled old Steif Bear on the pillow. Castiel pulls back the quilt and Dean lays the boy down, tucking the bear, bald and sucked on, into the boy's arms. "And this is the greatest biblical scholar in the Church?" He asks.

Sleeping Ben looks peaceful and like butter wouldn't melt in his foul little mouth. Dean is reminded of another little boy with the same name, but he never was able to see that one sleep.

"By some margin," Castiel says and smoothes the kid's brown hair as Ben smacks his lips in his sleep. "We shall await his guardian down stairs."

***

Mrs. Doyle's version of, "An hour, two at most" is more like three and when she comes back she seems amazed find the house still standing. "He didn't give you boys any trouble did he?" She asks as she fusses around in her purse, "I know that the agency was still funny about sending baby sitters but I didn't think it needed two of you." She hands Dean two crumpled twenty dollar bills.

Castiel takes the money from him and hands it back, "We are not babysitters, we came in search of information, but young Master Constantine had a hard day and is asleep."

Mrs. Doyle beamed, "I love it when angels come. He always sleeps so soundly when you use that juju on him." She looks at Dean, "Oh most blessed creature, oh heavenly messenger." Dean makes a gun shape with his hand and points at Castiel and she gives a grin that would have been lovely when she was a girl and is now strangely anachronistic. It just makes her look old. "Oh great heart, oh wondrous and divine."

"He's Dominions," Dean adds looking at Castiel's expression. The angel might be preparing to smite her, or cataloguing the contents of his sock drawer, Dean finds it hard to tell.

She changes tack without so much as a blink. "Oh most terrible, most feared, oh honoured sword of heaven."

"The child sleeps," Castiel interrupts her.

"Let me get you boys," she stops herself, "you, some coffee, I'd offer you tea but . . ."

"Aziraphale stole the pot, we know." Dean finishes.

"I have bags but they're just not as good for making tea."

Castiel nods. "We must be leaving and we shall return in the morning, perhaps then the young Master will be in a better mood."

"Do you see it raining frogs?" Mrs. Doyle asks under her breath. "You can stay here, there is plenty of room, it will only take me a moment to make it up."

"It is fine," Castiel assures her and puts his hand on Dean's shoulder to guide him out, "there is a small motel we noticed off the highway, it will more than suit our needs."

Dean's sure that if he didn't know better he might think that Mrs. Doyle disconcerts Castiel. She doesn't seem that bad to him, but she's certainly fangirling the angel. She's a tall thin woman with her hair cut short and dyed in blonde streaks on top.

"We shall return in the morning and we must thank you for your hospitality. Come along, Dean." The angel has Dean by the elbow and although he appears to be smiling he's beating a hasty retreat.

***

Castiel clearly wants Dean to think that they ended up in a hotel, not a motel, because of the noises that he intends to make Dean moan, and people being less likely to question. The hunter is not averse to the hand down his jeans and cupping his ass almost as soon as they're through the door but even he can recognize a deflection when it squeezes him. Dean has questions and Castiel doesn't want to answer them.

And Castiel might be a lily livered chicken but he has the absolute best hands and when they kiss Dean wonders if Castiel isn't trying to scoop out his soul with his tongue and that's a good thing too.

The heels of the angel's hands are rough against his skin, while the rest of him is cool and almost baby soft. He smells of frankincense and myrrh and lingering hints of the mint shower gel that Dean prefers.

It's a heady mixture. He could get high on it, and the way that Castiel's cool lips bear down on his own, licking up the stray drops of spit from the skin around his mouth.

There are places where the smell of Castiel is strongest, folded into the skin with sweat, and Dean breaks his mouth away and buries his face in the crook of Castiel's armpit and breathes him in through the cheap Walmart tee he's wearing, wanting skin on skin, to tilt his head and lick the skin and hair there.

He wants to find a place in the paper-thin skin between thigh and pelvis, that silk soft crease, and just live there, apart from the world, safe from the apocalypse and all its woes, and breathe Castiel where he is most pungent; where he is most base. In that piece of skin where he can feel the sluggish beat of his human heart and his holiness most keenly.

With his face pressed against that stretched taut, parchment soft skin Dean is willing to accept everything Castiel is: powerful and divine.

In that place, where the skin is almost hot, where Dean's hand fits so perfectly, there he would be happy, all five senses drunk on Castiel, on myrrh and salt and sweat and almost hot and safe, so perfectly safe.

Dean would build a house there.

He would live there and be happy.

The skin there has the texture of rose petals and Dean doesn't like that analogy, it's the sort of thing a chick would think, but it's true. The rest of Castiel's skin has the texture of fine butter suede, like that really expensive pair of shoes he saw in that shop in New York, and there are places where the skin is crinkled, dry and rough, and those places Dean likes to kiss when the angel is not looking.

Dean's not sure when he got to his knees and pressed the side of his cheek against the denim of his own jeans hung on the angel's frame and pushed against that place on the left side. The fabric pulling at the skin of his cheek and Castiel's hands around his like a benediction.

The only thing Dean knows for sure is that this isn't about love or passion or need, it's about the smell of it and the feel of it and the security of it. Kneeling like this, on this crappy hotel carpet with his face trying to rub its way through the fabric of his own cheap jeans, he feels safe.

He doesn't even remember the last time he felt that.

It feels strange in his stomach, like he's eaten too much and he really needs to belch. It's a good feeling, but new and alien.

And Dean doesn't know when he starts, but he's talking and talking and talking and he can't stop and Castiel just drinks it in as if it was more than just nonsense. Dean's not even sure that they're even words, just that they're pouring out of him and it's like a deluge and when they're gone, when he's done, he feels emptied. Then Castiel, with a tiny smile playing at the corner of his lips, falls to his knees in front of him, cups his jaw in those cool hands and kisses him hard.

It's not the first time Dean has had a vision when Castiel kissed him, but this vision is different.

Often they are like dreams, fanciful light things of the two of them recumbent and indolent in each other's skin, but this is a vision of war, of the apocalypse.

It is Dean, but it is not Dean.

It is a shining great force of will and it is wearing golden armour emblazoned with flames, and there is fire all about him even his hair is fire, bound behind his ears with golden wire and he is holding aloft a great halberd with flames licking their way up its shaft and he knows the wood for it has come from the great tree Yggdrasil. He is riding a great red Re'em and its mane and tail are fire and it's cloven hooves split the ground and there is gore hanging from its single golden horn.

Upon a white Re'em, wearing icy silver armour and carrying aloft a great spear is Castiel in all his wonder.

When Dean pulls his mouth away from Castiel he looks at the angel from close up with the most amazing sense of awe because that was the Heavenly Host armed and ready for war and crackling between them in their kiss.

Dean comes to his senses quickly enough, "Okay the spears I get," he says, "but what's with the fucking unicorns?"

And Castiel blinks once, twice and then he laughs, low and deep, and Dean can't help but laugh with him.

The laughter dissolves into kisses and Castiel murmurs into his ears between licks and sucks and short sharp bites. "Heaven is gestalt," he purrs, "and yours for the taking, my cherished one." And Dean does what he always does when Castiel talks like that, he moves his hand somewhere more interesting and ignores the words.

When Castiel picks him up and drops him on the bed by what could be his belt loops Dean just grins up at him, with his best shit eating grin and says, "Well come on then."

Castiel peels off his shirt and puts his knee on the bed, and Dean has already found the radio and turned it on loud to some classic rock station where they're playing the Eagles who are singing the lyrics, "I'm looking for the daughter of the Devil himself, I'm looking for an angel in white," and that just makes him laugh harder.

Castiel has him now, his arms around Dean's waist and Dean knows the radio is still not quite loud enough but he really doesn't care anymore.

It has been a long time since there was laughter in this, in fact, he thinks, it's been a long time since there was laughter.


	19. In which the truth makes so much less sense than the comfortable lie that Dean is used to.

Dean dreams of Hell in vivid lurid 1940's Ivanhoe Technicolor. The colours are too bright and plasticky – ending with solid black lines. He's been taken off the rack and hung up on two forked hooks by the meat of his chest. The hooks are attached with a wire to weights that fix a second wire about his throat.

This type of torture is slow and anticipatory, well above Alastair's ability. That demon comes into his own with patience and monotony. He can do the same thing every day for thirty years without breaking a sweat.

God knows he has.

Belial is another matter entirely.

Belial has a flair for the dramatic. She is wearing a black silk dress with the side gashed high enough to show the tops of her stockings and the butterfly tattoo there. The pattern in her hosiery is one of roses. "You see, Alastair," she says "half of the joy of it is anticipation, see how he's hung. His own weight pulls the meat away, but also see how it tightens the noose around his neck. As long as he can hold his arms aloft he staves off the inevitable strangulation, but the hooks are ripping away at the very muscles that make this possible. Do you see, Alastair?"

Alastair doesn't. He's an artist with a knife but nothing else seems to take.

"I despair of you," she says in a flurry of scarlet hair and white face paint as she turns. "I try and I try and I try," she says, "and you simply never learn." She looks at Dean hanging there on the hooks, "perhaps you will prove a better student." Her smile is wicked and cruel and the painted teardrop on her cheek is glistening like a drop of green blood.

The next day he breaks.

Dean awakes sandy eyed and grouchy. Castiel is standing at the end of the bed, in the poor light from under the bathroom door, performing his katas as he does every night. Dean watches him with narrow eyes and tight breaths until Castiel sees him, with that gaze that holds the weight of worlds and is so innocent that Dean wants to rip it off, to smash it, to grind it under foot and Castiel can see that, but instead of backing away from the wounded animal Dean clearly is, he smiles.

It just makes it hurt more.

Then Castiel steps back, out of rhythm and offers Dean his hand and Dean climbs off of the bed and stands one just in front of him, close enough that they are almost touching, and falls into step with the katas.

He shouldn't know this, but his body does, it knows the steps like he's breathing. Like riding a bicycle he thinks as he turns, knowing a single misstep this close step to Castiel and they'd both fall.

Sam had once watched some boring ass documentary on Shaolin monks and told Dean to pay attention to this one bit where they all stood in formation and practised their fighting. It was amongst one of the coolest things that Dean had ever seen.

Those monks were nowhere near as close as he and Castiel were, but he also knew that this was how angels habitually did their katas.

They continued this way for long, long minutes until Dean whirled on the ball of his foot so that he faced the angel, still close enough to taste his breath, and began to spar.

Castiel's expression remained impassive as he did it, blocking each blow, taking kicks and head butts without blinking. "Fight me, damn you," Dean managed through the rage and the pain, "Fight me."

And that's when he started to cry.

Castiel doesn't say anything. He just waits until the storm dies down and Dean, in just his briefs, collapses into the angel's arms while sobbing.

When the angel does speak he says, "Only God knows the infinite complexities of love." As if it answers anything at all.

Dean's tears on Castiel's arms turn into scratches and the scratches to bites – desperation, rage, pain, and futility trying to take its toll on Castiel.

There is fire between them.

It licks like a second tongue.

The fire finds the places in Castiel that Dean wants to rend and tear. Cheap man made fabric is consumed in its touch, leaving the angel naked and smiling that infuriating almost smile at the corners of his mouth. Castiel takes the nails, the teeth, and the fire and it makes him hard.

Castiel is hard beneath him.

The angel is scratching and biting him back, bucking into the films and then he is pushed back so Dean is on the floor and Castiel is above him.

Castiel is naked and hard and glorious above him, limned in the darkness by Dean's flames.

Dean can feel him through the fire as if it's an extension of his nerves and he can control it so that it wraps around Castiel's hardness like another hand and nothing else matters because Castiel wants this. Castiel enjoys this, because the angel lifts up and angles Dean's cock beneath him and then sinks down onto it and Dean can't help but cry out.

The inside of the angel is hot and tight and there's no lube, it's almost rough but it feels like molten sunlight. Castiel pushes his hands against Dean's chest, against the tattoo and Dean's hands are on the swell of the angel's waist, pushing his thumbs with their fire deep into the meat of him and throwing up his fuck with all of the rage, pain, and frustration he has in him. Castiel is riding him and still in control, still measuring the speed, but Castiel can take so much- too much- not enough.

He comes into the angel's body with his hips bucking and gasping, "Cas, oh God, Cas, my Cas, my only," as his heels struggle for purchase on the carpet, his fingers dig into Castiel until he breaks his skin. If Dean could think he'd want the world to end now, like this, but it doesn't.

The fire dies out between them and they are left, sore and sweaty. Castiel remains leaning over him until he takes his hand from Dean's pectoral muscle and lightly presses his fingertip to the place between Dean's nose and mouth where the skin folds and Dean feels the anger again, welling beneath his skin with secrets no one bothers to explain to him.

***

Mrs. Doyle looks harried when she opens the door. New Sammy is standing beside them, sniffing at the bush beside the door in an interested fashion. "Today's not a good day," she says, "he's . . . well," there is a crashing sound behind her, "yes, well, like that."

"We do not have time to come back another day." Castiel says and tries to push past her.

She uses her own body as a hinge for the door and wont let him through. "Look, he's . . ."

"Having a tantrum?" Dean drawls. "Look, lock him in the cellar and we'll go through the books on our own." He holds up a pink cardboard box. "Besides, we brought donuts and," in his other hand he holds aloft a carrier bag with a strangely shaped content, "a new tea pot."

The child pops his head around his guardian's waist. "A new tea pot?" He asks although he sounds sulky and as if he he's been crying, "Come in." The dog pushes past Mrs. Doyle and rubs against the Ben's hand to ingratiate himself. Dogs quickly learn that children equal treats.

The child is also still clearly pissed about something but he slams a book that's almost as big as he is on the kitchen table as Mrs. Doyle nervously washes out the new tea pot.

"So, Winchester, right?" He opens the book, which is beautifully illustrated and written in some language Dean has never even seen before not even at the end of those German porn movies he fell asleep through when they warn of copyright infringements in more languages than seems plausible.

"Wincott, Winner, Winton." Ben reads out running his finger over the script, "Ah here's a note, Winchester, Dean, Winchester, son Campbell, Mary."

"What is that?" Dean asks, worried now that the book is in front of him.

"It's a lexicon, all of the hunters are in here," Ben says without blinking, "I need to get the other volume. You could have told me that it was a distaff thing and I'd need A-N."

"Which means?" Dean asked.

"That you're descended from your mother's side." The child then climbs down from the chair, "orange pekoe," he tells Mrs. Doyle, "Campbell, Campbell." He runs the name around in his mouth. "Rings a bell, Campbell." He screws his lips up, thinking, and he continues rolling it around in his mouth as he gets the other volume and puts it down on top of the first one.

He seems to know the page from memory and turns to an illustration of Mary Winchester and beneath her are both Sam and Dean, they look like they were photographs taken yesterday. He reads some of the strange text and then goes, "Oh," he checks it a second time and goes "Oh my," again, then he swears, "Holy fuck," he looks at Dean, "well, that makes things complicated. Mrs Doyle, sod the orange pekoe and break out the Gunpowder."

Ben looks at Dean. "Fuck, how to explain this?" He turns the book so Dean can see but he still can't read the book at all.

"I have tried," Castiel says, "my words fall short. I thought that as you are still human, you might understand better than I."

"I'm ancient," Ben retorts slapping the book, "and this would be a bastard to explain to me."

"What?" Dean loses his temper. "Just fucking tell me already, I'm a grown man I can take it."

Ben lowers his eyes, "It's really complicated. You gotta understand that the explanation is going to be complicated and well, it's going to suck." Mrs Doyle put the new tea pot down on the table with three large mugs and a small jug of milk. "You see it goes back to the very beginning, you see everything has an equal and opposite." He pours the tea, kneeling on the chair to reach over the table, "including God."

"Perhaps," Castiel offers, "it would be better if I started."

"Dunno," Ben says, screwing up his face. "This sucks, I hope you know that." He tries to stare Dean down so he can get out of this. Unfortunately, Dean has years of questions and so he lets his silence answer for him.

"Look, there's Creation and there's the opposite of it, Entropy. If something lives then it dies. In the beginning they were equal, everything that was created was born to die, you understand. So when God came into being so did Corruption." He takes in a deep breath of the steam of his tea. It's good tea, even Dean can tell that. "And when God created Heaven then Corruption created Hell. Right, equal and opposite." He looks up, and he had brown eyes like those of a cow, but he looks so much older than his skin.

"So when God created the angels, Corruption created the demons. Everything with an opposite."

"The scales were balanced," Castiel agrees, staring into his cup, he hasn't added milk to his tea and it looks unlikely that he is going to drink it at all.

"So God worries about this other place just over the border, you know the way potentates always do, and Corruption eyes its borders nervously because well, they both had armies. So God finds his most trusted angel, his most cherished, Lucifer, and sends him off to investigate."

"But Lucifer was tainted," Castiel explains, "at first we did not know that he had carried the Corruption within and that he might bring that taint to the Silver City. So he was cast out, God gathered his armies and drove out Lucifer and all of those to whom the taint had spread." Castiel makes that sound regretful but it's hard to tell with him.

"They were sent to Hell. You know that shit Milton wrote about it being better to rule in Hell, nah, Lucifer didn't have a say in the matter, he was Corrupted and that was just wrong so they turfed him out. So, he found himself in Hell and gathered up the Corruption as best as he could, knowing it would consume him and those who were pushed down with him, and he created the Hell Gates, and the great city of Dis, the Circle of Seven, the Tower of Babel where he trapped Baphomet, and at the bottom of the Pit he trapped the Corruption and himself with it."

"Three rings for elven kings under the sky, seven for dwarven lords in their halls of stone, nine for mortal men doomed to die, and one for the Dark Lord upon his dark throne." Dean's voice is a low growl. New Sammy is lying at his feet, impatient, and Dean knows that the dog feels dangerous.

"He created six hundred and sixty six seals to hold it in place."

"The seals," Dean enunciates those words.

"Exactly, but to keep the Corruption in he trapped himself behind the seals, so to rival Lucifer Lilith has to set him free. Then she kills him and takes his armies and goes to war against God, right, but if she does all of this then she lets out the Corruption and we get an Apocalypse." He takes a long large mouthful of his tea and makes happy lip smacking sounds, "you cannot beat a teapot for making tea."

"We are trying to avoid this," Castiel's voice is even, "so by protecting the seals we keep Lucifer trapped with the Corruption."

"What has this got to do with me?" Dean clutches the tea so tightly his knuckles are white and there are flames licking around the cup.

Castiel slaps him on the hand, "some of these books are priceless," he points out and Dean does his best to let the fire die out again.

"I'm getting there," Ben Constantine protests, panicking a little at the fire that he can now see that Dean controls. "Look, the demons are like a bunch of zombies at a weenie roast when it comes to power. And they all try things."

"Like Azazel," Dean growls.

"Yeah, the Seven keep everything in Hell under control, they have their games and within reason their games are kept downstairs. So those with pretensions, they come here, to mess around, to work outside the sight of the Seven."

"Like Azazel," Dean growls again.

"Yeah," the child continues, his tone is so dark for such a young body. "Like him. I was one of his," Ben pauses, "They create anti-Christs and interfere, trying to get leverage to achieve power downstairs, to be one of the Seven- to be one of the controlling stakes."

"Your brother is one of those plans." Castiel looks into his cup as he says it. "Azazel made the contract with your mother for that reason."

"That's what the book says," Ben agrees. "When the world was created it was Corrupt, right, and the angels could only interfere in small ways so god thought up a loophole."

"There's always a loophole." Dean murmers.

"Yep. He created hunters, He sent down his angels to choose women who would bear great warriors who could fight the Corruption. They'd go out and kill all of the terrible things that came out of the Corruption. Azazel chose those children who were descended from those women."

Castiel is still staring into his tea when he states, "That is what the passage in Genesis means."

"But four thousand years of oral tradition has messed that up," Ben adds. "Oh to have been at the Council of Nicaea." He doesn't even try to explain that.

"Your mother had leisure to think about the contract with Azazel and she knew many of the secrets lost among the Hunters."

"She came here," Constantine says, "I remember her now, blonde woman, terrified that her husband would know what she was doing. She had told him that she was visiting a friend. Monkey dealt with her. He must have told her about the other option."

"To make the coin land on its side." If they knew Dean better perhaps they would recognise his tone as dangerous.

"Yeah, so she summoned the Archon and offered herself to him."

"Descended from them herself she could bear his seed and she bore him a son. You." Castiel raises his head as he speaks. "You, Dean, are the son of the Son of God, the Prince of Light and Fire."

Dean's cup shatters in his hand. "What the fuck? Are you calling my Mom a whore? She didn't cheat on my Dad, she wouldn't have, she loved him."

Ben is quick to appease, "No! Not at all. Look, if she was just some woman from the streets you would have been born hideously deformed, the very divinity at the core of It would have crippled you, but she was descended from Them herself."

"Dean, you are one of us," Castiel says trying to explain, but Dean is furious, the flames are covering him entirely now, blue-green and tempestuous. "You are Nephal."

"No," Dean protests, "No, no fucking way. No, my Mom wouldn't."

"But she did," Ben cuts him off, "look at the book, it writes itself and it clearly shows the Archon as your father."

"Your mother was a hunter," Castiel says in cool even tones, "she wanted nothing more than to give you a life apart from hunting. That could not be. So instead she armed you as best she could for the upcoming war to make up for her mistake."

Dean can't even hear them now, in his head the words Mom and whore are flashing like great neon blinkers even though he is the one who used that word.

He's standing now and New Sammy is whining and he knows the dog has been so good, so quiet, just lying at his feet and now the dog is whining, like Dean it wants to attack something. "It's a lie, it's a fucking lie, don't you dare talk about her like that. You didn't fucking know her."

"I'm sorry." Ben says and it's probably genuine which just makes it worse.

"I'm outta here." With New Sammy loping along behind him Dean walks out of the kitchen, past the walls of books to the door, down to the anti-Impala, opens the door, lets the dog jump onto the back seat and then climbs in behind the wheel and drives.

The house isn't in sight when he finds his cell and dials Sam, because when the shit hits the fan all Dean wants is his brother, and he's not even sure why. "Where are you?" He asks. "I'm coming to get you."


	20. In which Dean meets a goddess on the road

For the first time driving doesn't help clear Dean's head. It's almost as if there are two of him and each one is trying to kill the other. The bangle on his arm seems heavier than usual. The shiny white bead banging angrily against the knob of his wrist. It seems to give off a humming noise that catches in his ears like a bee.

New Sammy is snoring in the back seat, swaddled in that ugly fleece blanket that just showed up one day. Like the car. Like that damned angel.

The radio kicked out an hour ago with a burst of Emmy Lou Harris asking for the "ocean to wash her clean, to wash her clean."

Dean's not sure when he started singing the verse on his own. He thinks that he finally understands the song, the way it resonates and aches, and his voice is hoarse as he sings to himself, to the dog, to the cold and the anti-Impala.

"Well you really got me this time and the hardest part is knowing I'll survive. I have come to listen for the sound of the trucks as they move down out on ninety five and pretend that it's the ocean coming down to wash me clean, to wash me clean."

Singing eats the miles up as he drives across America's flatlands under a sky the exact blue of Castiel's eyes.

For the first time in his life, he hits the note.

For the first time in his life, he even tries.

Dean knows that he's fucked, he's sitting in an ugly white Chevy Nova, with a dog of the wild hunt snoring in the back seat, singing fucking country music. All he needs now, he thinks, is a bottle of Wild Turkey, a banjo and a rousing chorus of Patsy Cline's Crazy to finish the image.

It's not even worth it to stop singing.

There's a blister on his foot large enough to have its own satellites.

The dog is snoring loud enough to wake a ghoul.

And his ass hurts.

There's only one thing for it he decides, opening the window to let the winter in, and opens his mouth. "Crazy, I'm crazy for feeling so lonely. I'm crazy, crazy for feeling so blue."

*************

She's standing at the bar, a vision in sprayed on black biker leathers and stilettos you could use in a murder. She's leaning over the jukebox with hair frothed and chains hanging around an ass like two boiled eggs in a handkerchief that Dean can't help but appreciate. She's like all his teenage wet dreams of rock chicks come to life: lip stick, eyeliner, lace and leather.

There's not a trucker in the place that doesn't appreciate her.

In fact, if she turned around and burst into a chorus of Edge of a Broken Heart he wouldn't be surprised.

There is a sort of marble hardness to her, as if she were carved in stone and then painted in late 80's glam metal perfection, right down to the steel studs. She leans against the jukebox as it starts to play The Chain by Fleetwood Mac.

He can't fault her choice as she's drinking tequila chasers without spilling a drop, swaying those perfect taut hips in time to Mick Fleetwood's percussive drum beats.

Dean always liked this song, despite it being Fleetwood Mac, in the kind of begrudging way that sometimes Bon Jovi could be cool, not that he'd have it in the car, and unlike Richie Sambora Stevie Nicks was hot even if she always did look like she'd got dressed in the dark.

Maybe this woman at the bar got dressed in 1988 but Dean aint complaining to the shimmy of over styled hair down her leather back as she mouths along with the guitar, her hips in perfect time to that stubborn slow drum beat.

Dean has an image of his Mom, white sweater and jeans, standing at the kitchen counter cutting carrots a song coming on the radio and her turning it up and dancing along in her socks, and then putting down the knife to pick him up and dance with him.

He doesn't know where the memory comes from, but it's a good one that only makes the explanation Castiel tried to give him hurt more. His mother is this blonde haired white sweatered goddess dancing with her baby son in a beam of kitchen sunlight to a song Dean always begrudgingly liked.

There's a deliberate pause in the music before the vocals cut in and Dean knows the words and so does the goddess at the bar, drumming her heel in strikes against the floor in perfect time to the music.

And Dean knows that time is relative because the song is what, four minutes long, but he could swear he spends years watching her.

The bar is quiet enough that you could hear a pin drop, truckers and others just watching her swing her hips and drum her heels, her hair shimmying like falling snow down against her jacket, and the chorus which feels orgiastic "And if you don't love me now, you will never love me again and I can still hear you saying we must never break the chain."

Dean knows it's odd, because this woman is smoking hot, the kind of woman he'd be all over in an instant, but he's associating her with his mother and she's starting to represent a form of bizarre mother-comfort he doesn't usually recognise.

This woman at the bar, this 80's biker rock chick, hasn't even looked at him and in his head he's associating her with Mom because she's dancing to a song he can remember his mother dancing with him to.

He's past the point where he might consider it a coincidence.

He's not that lucky.

Coincidences might happen, but not to Dean Winchester and not when every supernatural creature with more juice than a Duracell wants to be his friend.

Then, Dean decides he's reading too much into it and the song starts its bass line, the one that should make him cream his pants because it's just rock perfection and it is the only reason that he even acknowledges the song with anything other disdain, because Stevie Nicks (Stevie Nicks!), but that bass line is just musical perfection, even if it is Fleetwood Mac and not anyone cool.

It's like those moments when Bon Jovi is on the radio and you can't help singing along although it's Bon Jovi, or maybe just because it is.

It's one of those things you do despite yourself like knowing all the words to Spirit in the Sky or Daydream Believer.

His dad used to listen to that crap. Fleetwood Mac and Emmy Lou Harris and Patsy Cline and Willy Nelson. Him and Sam would sit in the back of the Impala, one broken half of a pair of headphones held to the side of their heads and try to ignore the music as their Dad, arm along the edge of the door window, sang along.

Sometimes when his Dad sang along it was the only time Dean saw him happy and Dean wondered if it was because it reminded him of his wife, of the times before, or just as Castiel had worded it so carefully, because joy was in the ears that hear.

And Dr. Hook and how he and Sam always howled along, just like everyone did, to Cover of the Rolling Stone and how Dad would laugh.

That is what the woman at the bar reminds him of, of happier times in the car, on the road, hunting, and the music that scored it.

She sits down at Dean's table, reaching across and stealing a few of his fries even dipping them in his mayo. "I suppose you'll give me a lift," she drawls with a voice that suggests years of hard drinking and heavy smoking, it's all whiskey and sex.

"You could be a serial killer," Dean replies, moving his plate out of her reach.

"Nah, kid," she says, drinking from the beer she got with her chaser. "My bike broke down a ways back, I needed some parts, ended up with some loser dropping me here. I can fix her myself but I don't fancy the walk." She puts her foot on the empty chair to the left of both of them, "not in these boots."

She calls him Kid. He has to concede the point about the boots.

"Was on my way to Vegas when the fuel line blew, never happens where there are people, always in the ass end of nowhere and I had to double back to get this." She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small piece of flexed wire, the fuel line in question. Her helmet is in a rucksack at her feet.

"They're not really practical." Dean agrees looking at the toes that are pointed enough to use as a weapon. They are a fine pair of boots though, on a fantastic pair of legs.

"But great for getting lifts in the middle of nowhere. My usual boots are with the bike on the side of the road. These're comfortable enough but a bit too high for a long walk." She reaches over for his fries, "and it's a long walk. You're going my way, west, just wondering if you could take me back to my baby."

Dean understands that, he misses the Impala with a sudden ache "What is she?"

"Kawasaki Ninja ZX 10R. Custom black paint job, totally modded, spent a fortune on her, and then she goes and springs her fuel line."

"Nice," he admits. If the bike is what she says it is, it's truly is a sweet piece of machinery.

"When she's working she's a wet dream," she agrees with a shrug of her shoulders, "when she breaks down then . . . not so much."

Dean can appreciate that and salutes her with his soda glass. Normally he'd try to hit that because she is gorgeous, even if she is old enough to be his Mom but his ass still hurts and there are places on his skin that still smell of Castiel, at whom he's still pissed, and it's too soon. "I'm Dean."

She gives him a quicksilver grin, all lip gloss and teeth, looking like she might bite him "Diana. So you going give me a ride, Dean?"

"I might. Depends on the dog. He likes you then you can ride."

"Won't be an issue," Diana says leaning back in the chair which creaks under her weight. "Animals love me, and it's not that far."

 

*************

 

New Sammy looks at Diana briefly, before wolfing down the burger Dean got him, bun and all, and then puts his head back down on his blanket and goes back to sleep. "He's a hunter," Diana says, "a good companion."

"You'll change your mind if he breaks wind." Dean tells her, "Well, you got the New Sammy seal of approval, guess I don't mind giving you a ride then."

Diana opens the door and climbs in, pushes the passenger seat all the way back then puts her rucksack in the footwell and both feet on the dash. "Let me guess, driver chooses tunes and passenger shuts her piehole." It's accompanied by another of those quicksilver grins and Dean thinks he might like her.

"Doesn't matter much," Dean tells her, "radio's shot and the CD player eats shit. This is my make do car till I get my girl back."

"What is she?" Diana asks surrounding generally interested as Dean pulls out of the roadhouse parking lot. She's leaning against the window, all long soft curves in hard leather.

"Chevrolet Impala, 1967. Gorgeous, black as coffee, runs like a dream."

"Then what's with this POS?" she asks, "It smells like teenage boy and wet dog, and old churches."

He doesn't tell her it's Castiel she's smelling. "Borrowed her from a friend, getting parts for my girl aint easy, so when she needs something she ends up waiting and then there was a family emergency," he shrugs, "so I ended up leaving her in South Dakota while I was in New York and then I up and inherited a dog. That's New Sammy, though if he thinks he's getting into my girl . . ."

Diana laughs. "He's a good dog, loyal." His sleeve falls back to show, the bangle with its shining bead, "I like your bracelet," she tells him, "let me guess - one of a kind."

"Something like that."

"I've seen something like that before. It was a family heirloom, on this girl I knew, said it was protective, that it was the tokens of old gods and demons, and if she held the right stone and said the right name that they'd save her."

"What happened?" He asks.

"Haven't seen her in years." Diana tells him. "Could be dead. I don't stay in places much."

"On the road a lot?" Dean asks knowing perfectly well what that's like. It's strings of cheap diners and cheaper motels, and burned food and Spaghetti-O's.

"I hunt down old stories, and the things I've seen," she laughs, "you'd think I was mad. Most folks do."

"Been on the road my whole life. You see shit. Shit people won't believe in 'cause they aint ever seen it, and it's too fucked up to be real, but it is, and it's just piled up, shit upon shit upon shit, and at the top, there's this gloss, and that's where most folks live." He doesn't know why he's telling her so much, only that it actually helps.

Diana nods and continues, "And you get to the point where you're the only one in a room that knows the gloss aint real, it's the shit that's underneath that is, and that's the stuff that'll fuck you right up, so you either learn to roll with the punches or try to live in the gloss knowing it aint real."

"I've been there." Dean agrees, and he has.

"And all you can do is put the dog in the back seat, put Metallica on loud and drive. Drive as far and as fast as you can."

He doesn't even think about what he's saying as he agrees with her. "You try to put that piece of road behind you and try and forget that it's real, it's all real, and there aint nothing you can do about it." He lets out a deep slow breath, "and that's what wakes you up in the night – when you can't breathe and you feel like there's something sitting on your chest but you know there's not because you took precautions, every damn precaution you could take, but it feels like it, and you wanna go mad because it's easier, but you know it's real so you aint got that option."

"Yeah, I been there," she agrees and shakes her lovely head.

Diana reminds Dean, and he's not sure why, of Jo. Maybe if Jo had been born forty years earlier. But they have this same haunted look, a hunters look. Maybe all women with that look will remind him of Jo, all blonde curls- just like his Mom.

Twenty years before Diana's favoured fashion and she would have been his Mom.

He laughs despite himself as in his head imaginary Sam, who is dressed like an old fashioned scholar, complete with thick glasses and tweed jacket, says "The recurring image of the triple goddess means blah blah blah." Even in his head, he can't follow what Sam's saying.

Maiden.

Mother.

Crone.

Jo.

Mary

Diana.

Dean puts his foot on the gas hard.

"Here's my stop, handsome," Diana says as the black shape of a motorcycle appears like a shadow on the side of the road. "Here," she says pressing something into his hand, "for the ride and the company. It's been real."

"It's all real," he says but doesn't look at what she's given him.

"Yeah," she agrees, "and therein lies the rub."

As he stops the car she pulls the boots off, showing knit socks in the most terrible shade of hot pink he's ever seen, he thinks of Magda, and stretches her toes. "Thanks, Dean. Now you take care of yourself, you hear me, soldier."

He salutes her mockingly. "If I come this way again I'll be sure to look out for strange ladies in bars who need rides to a truly sweet bike." He's not sure which is more attractive at the moment, her or the bike.

"Don't be a stranger." She agrees as she closes the door behind her.

He looks back at New Sammy who hasn't so much as snored in her presence before he opens his hand. Sitting there, shining silver in his hand like a bent piece of moonlight is a charm for his bracelet, a silver bow and arrow.

************

Driving up to the Singer Salvage Yard in the anti-Impala is a trip. New Sammy is on his back, legs in the air and pink belly showing to the winter air out of his blanket nest. Copernicus and Hypatia are lying at the gates on blankets like a pair of golden lions that barely turn their heads to his approach.

They don't even disturb New Sammy.

Sam is sitting on the front porch, Lacey is placed on his left like some kind of demented white miniature hell hound, because Dean knows she's just waiting to take a chunk out of him first chance she gets, angelic seal of protection or not. To Sam's right, all large eyes and freckles, with her hair in two red plaits, is a girl of about nine or ten. She's nursing a can of coke, and Dean does a double take because he knows her.

It's the child from the Hotel Dusk, and it's Sam's angelic guard dog, the one that Castiel asked to keep an eye out for him.

Sitting side by side it's a strange show, Dean thinks as he parks the car, the demonic poster boy as a handsome young man, who's too tall and needs his hair cut - again, looking like Ichabod Crane, and this jaded little girl who really has seen Hell.

Dean climbs out of the anti-Impala and New Sammy jumps out behind him. New Sammy's in that stance, the one that anticipates trouble and Lacey looks like she might give it to him.

"Dean," Sam says and his voice is hoarse, yelling all day kinda hoarse, "I missed you."

Dean knows it's true, and that just makes it hurt that little bit more.


	21. In which Dean wonders if there is anywhere left to fall

Sometimes, for reasons Dean doesn't quite understand, things between him and his brother are strained.

Sometimes it's like they live in each other's skin.

Today they're strained.

Sam looks worn out, as if he is an elastic band pulled too tight and ready to snap. His cheeks are gaunt and there are dark circles under his eyes and thin lips. His clothes, never tight fitting at the best of times, drop from him as if they were still on the hanger.

It's not like Sam to look so thin, so tired, so crumpled. Dean wants to march him into Bobby's kitchen and start frying eggs, pour them down his throat and then send him up to bed and sit on him until he's slept enough so that he looks human again.

Sam didn't look this rough when there was a demon wearing his meat.

It makes Dean hurt to look at him.

He wonders how he looks to Sam, if he's as gaunt, as grey, or if he looks like he's been moved from cushy squat to cushy squat, fed good food and had the arguments fucked out of him by an Angel of the Lord, which he admits is what happened.

Dean wonders how he must seem, wearing a sweater hand knit by Magda in New York state, his old brown leather jacket lost in a bus crash in the ass crack of nowhere when he laid it over Duffy, the clumsy haircut from Zsu Zsu in the Queen of Sheba, the strained look he's had since Ben Constantine dropped his nuclear warhead of a bombshell, and in the place of the leather thong he's worn for years, Bridhe's bracelet with it's strange collection of coloured stones and golden charms.

Only two months have passed but it feels like the entire world has shifted between them.

It's not the longest that they've been apart without contact, it's not even close, but now there is a chasm between them that was never there before. What happened to Dean didn't happen to Sam, they have both changed, and he's not sure if it's been for the better.

Instead of the hunter, Sam looks like the hunted.

Dean breaks the silence between them. "Man, you look like shit. Did you eat at all when I was gone?" He puts his hand on Sam's shoulder, convinced he can feel the edges of the bone under his palm. "If I find out you are under another one of those starving to death curses and Bobby didn't deal with it, I'm going to kick his ass."

Sam's eyes are dark and angry, his mouth tightens. "You don't get to judge," Sam says and brushes his hand away as he goes inside and slams the door behind him.

"I tried," the girl from the stairs states, she's playing with her strange huge eyed doll, which is now wearing a dress made from one of Bobby's old shirts. "He doesn't listen much." She offers her hand, and it's so small in comparison to his own when Dean takes it. "I'm Ezraqueel. Castiel said that you knew about me."

"Yeah," Dean says, "so you're Izzy." And the child for a moment looks startled at the contraction of her name, and then she offers a smile, like Castiel's – the one that hides in the corners of his mouth and that Dean is getting good at identify. "Bobby taking care of you?"

"Apart from trying to send me to social services now and again," she agrees. "It took a while to convince him, apparently I should be wearing a suit."

"You're not Dominions?" Dean asks.

"No, I'm Thrones," she tells him, "Dominions fight the wars, we just live through them." Izzy looks so tired, bone driven and old although her body is clearly that of a child. Ben Constantine was a child who happened to be very old, Izzy is clearly very old and happens to be a child.

New Sammy, who usually gives Castiel a wary berth, doesn't react to her except to step out of her way.

It tells Dean everything he needs to know about her. "How has it been around here?" He asks. If he knows Bobby, he's either tried to exorcise her or ignored her completely. Bobby doesn't really understand things he can't hunt or use for hunting.

She smiles wistfully at that, "Bobby just shouts 'I'm calling social services.' He never does, just threatens to chase me off. I like it here, I sleep with the dogs."

"Man, he doesn't let you in the house." Dean shakes his head; he didn't think Bobby would be like that.

"The house doesn't want me there," Izzy says sadly, "but there's an old truck that he's carpeted and it has windows and a mattress. The dogs are warm and the cats come in when it rains." She offers him that jaded smile again, "I got a blanket and Copernicus is a cuddler, I like it." She sounds like she does too. "It's okay, Dean, you don't have to worry about me."

"Course not, you're a bad-ass Angel of the Lord."

Her smile gets a little broader and he can see it in her eyes. "Something like that," she agrees. "And Sam comes out to talk to me, he's been so sad." She looks tired again, like the weight of the world is on her shoulders. "I don't know how to make it better. I'm not much of an angel, am I?"

Dean squats down to look her in the eye where she's sitting on the stoop. "Kid, God doesn't ask that you succeed, only that you try." He's pretty sure that he stole the line from Castiel but he's happy to take credit, "and me, I can see that you're trying."

Izzy wipes at her eyes furiously, snuffling back tears. "Want me to go now? I mean, you're here and . . ."

"Do you want to stay?" He asks.

She nods through the coming flood of weeping. "Then stay, let's see about getting you in the house. Sleeping with the dogs, I don't know." He rolls his eyes for comic effect but she doesn't notice.

She throws her arms about his shoulders and presses her cheek against his. "I'm sorry," she sobs into his ear, "I'm so sorry." Dean doesn't know what she's apologising for but he soothes lazy circles on her back regardless.

**********

When Dean goes into the house New Sammy strolls in beside him like he owns the joint. He wanders into Bobby's sitting room, investigates the worn out couch with a long uninterested sniff and then finds the mat in front of the open fire, circles once, twice and then plops down and gives a body length shiver as he makes himself comfortable. Dean thinks it'll be five minutes max before he's snoring.

Bobby looks at the dog. "I don't let my dogs in the house." He says offering Dean a bottle of soda, it's open and Dean knows it'll be laced with holy water. It won't hurt him but Bobby likes to be careful. Bobby's been around, and it's a salve.

Bobby doesn't know where Dean's been.

Dean openly drinks from the bottle, "I'll pour some out for the dog if you want. I'm pretty sure he's clean though."

New Sammy eyes them with a black eye from under his fringe of grey hair and Dean knows that if Bobby so much as threatens him, the dog will tear his throat out.

It seems Bobby knows that too.

When Sam comes in, nursing a cup of coffee New Sammy tenses, his entire body ready to strike but he doesn't make another move. Dean listens for the sound of growling deep in the dog's throat but he doesn't hear it. He suddenly knows why Bobby trusts his dogs the way he does.

"So what you call him?" Bobby asks.

"Eoighn," Dean answers, "but I call him New Sammy."

Sam splutters on his mouthful of coffee. "What? Why?" He actually looks indignant. New Sammy doesn't look too impressed at his namesake either. He's lying on the mat under the broken devil's trap on the ceiling and staring daggers at Sam.

"He's like a Sasquatch: long, gangly and with floppy hair. It's obvious really." Dean tells him, and takes another mouthful of the soda, it's warm but that's okay. He's had worse. "Have you seen the size of his feet?"

"At least he's not dressed like a children's TV presenter," Sam says eying the jumper. Dean recognises the comment for what it is, an attempt to pretend that things are okay between them though they're clearly not.

"Don't diss the wool," Dean says plucking at it with forefinger and thumb, "thing was made for me by this lovely lady up in New York State," he doesn't mention that that lovely lady looks like a troll crossed with a shawl, with one eye and made a hobby of battering men with her walking stick when she felt like it. Sam doesn't need to know all the details after all. "It's warm."

"It's fugly." Sam continues, bobbing his head.

"I got one in the trunk just like it for you." Dean gives him a grin, although it's not quite true. Magda gave him two sweaters, and the other one is knit in a much worse bobbly wool and the image on it slays him.

"So where you been, boy?" Bobby asks sitting on the wooden chair beside the mat New Sammy has claimed, he reaches down to scritch the dog between his ears. New Sammy immediately decides Bobby is the best person in the world ever and he will never stop loving him, even if the world ends.

Dean sinks into the couch like it's quicksand with a sigh. "I have been everywhere." He answers, "Cas set up some kinda freaking underground railroad and I was the supernatural equivalent of Frederick Douglass." Out of the corner of his left eye he sees a quick movement, something long and spindly. "Bobby, you got brownies?" He turns his head to where he saw the motion but whatever it is has gone.

Bobby looks at him, "Not that I know of. Might be some mix in the cupboard though. Aint got that sweet a tooth."

"No," Dean corrects, "brownies, spindly little fuckers, about this high." He holds his hands about ten centimetres apart, "all teeth, not dangerous though, just a pain. Probably in the scrap yard," he shrugs, "You have no idea what I've seen," he shakes his head, "it's all true, everything."

"And," Bobby answers, "you're a hunter, boy, you seen all manner of dark and nasty things, why you surprised about some of the other things too?"

Dean is shocked for a moment before he realises that Bobby has a point. But then again nothing surprises Bobby any more.

"I saw a woman vomit a bird pellet, a real honest to god bird pellet. I thought she was pregnant, she was just digesting a frozen goose." He stops for a moment, "but man could she sing, and she did this little shimmy thing that made me think pregnant women are hot."

He looks at the dog, "I watched a fucking banshee of all things rip through hellhounds like they were just smoke. I watched a mugger shoot himself in the head because a fucking angel told him to do it. Didn't say a word, just lifted the gun and blam," he makes a motion with his hand to simulate the shot right at the temple, "and then it ate a fucking Twinkie like nothing had happened."

"Castiel?" Bobby's voice is nervous. He doesn't trust the angel and Dean can hardly blame him.

"No," Dean says, "you should see him when he's pissed though," he laughs to himself a little ruefully, "it fucks up the electricity, you can believe he's bad-ass when he does. He speared this hellhound like it was a fucking pickle, pinned it to the floor. It was fucking A, man."

Sam asks the question that hangs between them, "Hellhounds?"

"Yeah," Dean rubs his jaw and doesn't meet Sam's eyes. Castiel said Sam hadn't known but he didn't expect the fear.

"Did Lilith come after you?"

"No," Dean tells him, "just an upstart with pretensions." He shrugs away the question, "you know what demons are like." Sam doesn't need to know the truth, he already looks so ill and tired. The forces of Hell were just eager to please, but the idea that Sam might be sitting on Bobby's couch the way that Dean is now and that the imaginary dog at his feet is a black hellhound with blood red eyes making happy noises as he pats it, makes the bile rise in his throat. "Aint seen them since New York State."

"You know," he continues, changing the subject, "there's this doctor in Cali, looks like Angelina Jolie but man the mouth on her," he changes the topic, "she's like a fourteen on a ten scale, but you wouldn't hit it. Man, I don't think there's anyone that stupid."

"The crash?" Bobby asks, it's the first time he's interrupted him.

Sam's eyes go wild. Obviously he hadn't known about that either.

Dean rubs at the side of his mouth with his thumb, uncomfortable at their scrutiny. "Yeah," he sounds rueful when he says it, "stupid driver fell asleep at the wheel, knew it was a bad idea to let anyone else drive, but I gotta say, you get fucked up you can't do better for a healer than Hathor out in Cali. I got her number somewhere."

He doesn't mention that he has her token on his bracelet and he doesn't need the phone to call her. "Hit that and she'd kill you, but, man, you'd die happy." He offers his best grin, the shit eating one he saves for mischief, the one that makes him feel like he's at home.

"And the angels?" Sam's voice is a low growl. The question hangs like a storm cloud between them.

"Dicks, all of them. Well, not Cas, he tries but he don't understand shit, and it just gets more confusing, I mean he took me to this kid, this brat," he blinks, "the kid's some big thing in the Church. He has all these books, man, Sammy, you'd cream your pants at the front door, and he's like ten, and he's read all these books. He knows everything, but he's no better at explaining shit, and the only one who's got answers doesn't want to share in case he ends up owing something to somebody."

Dean lowers his eyes to the dog on the rug, the one watching his brother like prey. "I think Cas pulled in a lot of favours to give me time." He tugs on the cuffs of his sweater, wanting to worry at the ends but knowing that they're watching him. "I met Death," he adds, "she was really cool."

He sees the spindly motion out of the side of his eye, the right one this time, scrabbling up the wall. His head whips around but it's too fast for him. "Bobby, you sure you aint got brownies?"

Bobby looks confused and shakes his head. "You staying for dinner?" he asks instead, convinced Dean's going to leave again, that this is just him checking in, letting them know that after two months he's alright and they don't need to hunt him down. John used to do that too, and Dean knows it. "I have chilli left over from last night."

Dean's mouth waters at the thought, Bobby makes his chilli on Monday and makes enough to last through the week, so he doesn't make it often. But Bobby makes the best chilli in the world. If Dean was to sell his soul for a recipe it would probably be for Bobby's chilli. When asked Bobby just shrugs and says "been making it long enough" as if that answers the question at all.

"You must have known I was coming."

"Considering you phoned ahead," Bobby tells him drily, "it's uncanny, it's like being psychic." He goes into the kitchen, "I'll feed your donkey too," he answers, and pats his thigh twice in sharp staccato. New Sammy looks at Dean who nods approval before he follows him.

"I didn't know where you were." Sam's tone is vitriolic and he looks tired and angry. "I couldn't do anything, I was stuck here just in case you came back! You just took off."

"I needed time, Sammy," Dean says and fusses with the soda bottle in his hands.

"You selfish, son of a bitch," Sam is angry, there is a sickly grey flush in his cheeks under his overlong floppy hair. With the weight he's lost, he's looks more like a crane fly than a sasquatch. "You just left me here, you didn't even check if I was okay."

"I didn't need to," Dean is surprised he's raised his voice, "you see that kid out there, that one that Bobby's got sleeping with the damn dogs, she's a fucking angel. Castiel asked her to look out for you. That's just it, Sammy, you think because you're an anti-Christ candidate that you're the fucking be all and guess what, they don't give a shit."

He has to stop to take a deep breath.

"Yellow Eyes didn't care who did his dirty work, he marked off kids with psychic abilities, hunter brats from long lines of hunter brats, so he could do something in Hell that if he tried to do down there they'd just crush him like a bug. So he did it up here, and we were just unlucky."

Sam's hands are ramrod straight at his sides and his fists are spasmodically clenching. His jaw is white with tension. "Unlucky?" It sounds like knives on stone.

"Yeah, the angels don't care about you, they just want to stop Lilith and will do anything they can to see it happen. They don't care if they wipe out continents to stop her and you know that, you think that if you pinged on their radar they'd just tell you to stop?" Dean's angry too, it's that cold rage that's followed him since he saw Sam kissing Ruby all the way back in November. It's been two months since he saw his brother except for a few short, painful, phone conversations and Sam's still being pissy.

"And they care about you?"

"Apparently yeah, enough that there's a kid camping out in an old van to watch over you, because I asked them to and –" he turned his head, "what the fuck is that?"

"I didn't see anything." Sam treats it like a diversion. It's not above Dean to use it as one.

"S'that fucking brownie, I think, Bobby shouldn't have let them in the house. Little fuckers like to spread shit all over everything." He turns back to Sam, who is perched on the edge of an old armchair, Dean knows that chair well, the ass is long out of it, if he sits back he might as well be sitting on the floor with his legs sticking out of the frame. Bobby keeps promising to replace it, but it's been twenty years and he still hasn't.

"Sam, you know Mom made a deal." He has this image of Mom, crocheted white sweater and white jeans, white socks and Farrah Fawcett hair reaching down to take his hands to dance with him. She must have been pregnant with Sam, and Dean is glad he remembers it. "You know, she did that stinking deal with Yellow Eyes because she didn't think she had anything left to lose, but then maybe she figured it out, I don't know, I wasn't there." He sees a spindly arm at the top of the bookcase.

Dean drops the bottle on the floor and stands up.

"Dean. There's nothing there," Sam still thinks it's a diversion but Dean doesn't stop, he holds up his hand and signals him to be quiet and Sam responds with a sort of harrumphing noise that's barely loud enough to hear.

Dean can feel the fire burning under his skin, all the hairs on the backs of his arms are prickling and his skin feels cold, like electricity dancing. He uses that sense of wrongness, a thing he's not used to from brownies, to stalk along the book case. He's waiting on it throwing books at him but it's not paying any attention to him at all. With his left hand he lifts a commemorative paperweight and hefts it, wondering if it's worth throwing.

Sam makes that pissy 'I'm disappointed in you Dean,' sigh that he normally only reserves for either acts of complete stupidity or what Sam considers a lack of general knowledge.

Dean doesn't care, it's like stalking a rat. He remembers a rat that got into their motel room when they were kids and Sam sat on the bed shrieking "Don't kill it, don't kill it!" And the little fucker didn't want to be caught, or get out.

He watches the thing, it's a bit too big to be a brownie, he thinks, more the size of a baby doll than a Barbie, and waits for it to move, and when it does he grabs it with his right hand and takes it from the waist high shelf and slams it hard against the floor. It smells of rot and corruption and it's stinging his hand, like he's being electrocuted by its touch, and what the fuck, so he raises the paperweight and smashes it down on the thing's head.

It has yellow eyes and a forked tongue and Dean doesn't care what the thing is but it's going down.

He uses the paperweight, inviting people to see the world's biggest ball of yarn of all things, to smash it's skull as it hisses and spits and whispers.

It's only when he's stopped with the thing's blood, which is of all the colours in the universe hot pink, all over his face, that he sees Sam.

Sam hadn't believed him, and yet there is something that looks like an underweight four year old, all thin long limbs and claws, on the floor. It's head a hot pink mess of goo and boneshards on the floor boards.

"Well, fuck," Bobby says from the doorway. "What the hell is that?"

And Dean doesn't have an answer and that's worse than being the only one to see the thing.

"Dude," Sam stumbles out the words, "you just killed Dobby the House Elf."


	22. In which there are a lot of hats

When Sam walks out of the shower that evening, a skeleton thin bone-bag of a person, Dean sees the scratches on the left side of his neck and shoulder. He decides that Dobby the House Elf or whatever the fuck it was died too damn quickly. He's not sure what the fuck it was, other than it a creepy little son of a bitch and he was the only one who could see it. What the hell was up with that?

Bobby had scraped up the abomination with a shovel and taken it out back to burn it. Izzy told them to make sure they stood upwind of it because the fumes were nasty, and it gave off this greasy black smoke that managed to get in their hair and clothes regardless of where they stood.

Even pressed Izzy wouldn't say what it is, just that it was trapped in the house and the same protection spells that keep her out kept it in.

Sam goes to bed early, still pissy, spread out on a couch in one of the back rooms. Dean, finding a grape popsicle in Bobby's freezer that's probably been there since the eighties, goes looking for Izzy.

She's huddled in a purple and red hoodie with her hair up in a loose braid, and kicking the dirt with her white deck shoes. Dean takes off his own coat on seeing her and wraps it around her small shoulders. It's January and the kid- no, angel - is barely dressed. He knows, intellectually that she doesn't feel the cold, but in his head she's ten and it's freezing.

Lacey lopes over, like a big cat on a hunt, and drops down at Izzy's feet.

Dean snaps the popsicle in two and gives her one of the sticks.

Izzy looks at him like it's a truly magnificent gift rather than some frozen juice on a stick, covered in ice crystals and burns from being in the bottom of the freezer for twenty years. She thanks him in a small tight voice like she might cry.

"What was that thing?" He knows enough about the workings of Heaven that you get nothing for nothing, and wonders what half of a grape popsicle is worth.

"A Yattering," she answers, "they whisper," she sucks on the popsicle thoughtfully, "they say things in your ear, evil things, and make you believe that you're thinking them." She looks at him and in the lamplight he can see the freckles across her nose. "They're not dangerous," she adds as a coda, "They just whisper."

And then he asks, because he has to, "If Cas saw it would he have let it be?"

"It's not very powerful," she says, licking the sticky juice from the side of her hand, "it would probably die from being in the same room as him."

It reassures him somewhat, but he's got her here, and she's not as unintentionally cryptic as Castiel so he might as well ask. "Why me?" He lowers his eyes to look at his own, barely touched popsicle, "I mean Cas went into Hell to get me back, why?"

"Because you're our brother," she says as if it answers all the questions he might ever ask, "we didn't know about you until you went to Hell and then we felt it as if we were in Hell with you. So Castiel went to get you." It's amazing to Dean how reverent she sounds when she says it. "Zophael wanted to go, but Castiel said no, he'd do it, because Destiny said it would be better. Zophael is," she stops for a moment, "Zophael doesn't choose sides." It sounds like she's repeating something she heard someone else say.

Dean has a moment where he wonders what it would have been like if someone other than Cas had plucked him out of Hell, but the thought doesn't want to stick. He wonders if . . . if this Zophael had done it, he would feel that same hunger that he does for Castiel? Even now, pissed at him, Dean wants him here, which is such a chick reaction he doesn't even want to admit it to himself.

"Zophael doesn't even fight in the war." Her voice is so small when she says it, like she's tattling on her elders, that Dean is surprised that he even heard her.

"The war against Lucifer?" He's not so disingenuous that he can't take advantage of her. Izzy has answers and he wants them.

"No, that's just," she goes quiet. "The power struggles of Perdition are the business of the Pit." It's a rote answer, and Castiel has said the same thing before. "Every prophet in his house." She adds.

"It's all this," she says spreading her hands, "we've fought for so long, so hard, not against the demons, against ourselves." She lowers her eyes and drops the melted popsicle to the stoop where Lacey finishes it off quickly. "We were loved best!" She says as if it answers anything at all. She's crying again, "we were loved best." She repeats through the tears.

In his head he hears Reigert talk about maintaining the status quo.

He hears Uriel calling him a monkey.

He sees the scratches on Sam's shoulders from the Devil that literally perched there.

He knows that he's on the verge of a revelation, that he's a second away from understanding everything but it's just out of his grasp.

"We were loved best," she repeats as if it's all she knows how to say.

He's almost there, it's on the tip of his tongue, and he knows that he knows it the same way he knows how to breathe. Another second, another heartbeat and he'll understand. "You coming in or what?" Bobby asks from the door, "I'm locking the door with or without you."

Dean curses under his breath because it's gone, the revelation he almost had has been chased away. He's not angry though, a little frustrated but he knows it'll come to him.

He stands up to follow Bobby and looks at Izzy. "Sure you're not coming too?" He asks the angel. If Bobby questions him, he says nothing.

"I'm good," she says, "Really." But even if Dean doesn't believe her he doesn't push it.

"She's an angel," he tells Bobby as the door locks behind them. "Maybe bad-ass but . . ." he forgets where he's going, "she's a kid."

"Still say I should call social services," Bobby grouses.

"I asked, well Cas asked, if she'd watch over Sammy while I was gone." He goes into the kitchen and sits at the small table there.

"You boys are like an old married couple," Bobby says and pulls two beers from the icebox and sets them down on the table before sitting down himself. "Not one of you with the sense God gave a drowning rat that was stupid enough to fall in the water in the first place."

Dean laughs because it's Bobby's way of sharing and caring and he can appreciate that. "Mom made a deal," the words slip out of him, "and she knew it was fucked up so she made a second deal which was just worse."

Bobby just takes a mouthful of his beer before he shrugs, "You all make deals, you Winchesters. Hell the only one who hasn't is Sam because no demon will make one with him. You're all as thick as pigshit when it comes each other."

"Dad died, once, before you knew him," Dean continues in a low voice, surprised that he's telling this at all, "Yellow Eyes killed everyone in front of Mom, her Mother, her Father, Dad, and he said he'd give her Dad back, no questions asked, and in return he'd come by in ten years to pick up something." He has to pause and gather himself before he continues, "So she took the deal and I don't blame her," Dean adds quickly, "I woulda too."

Bobby quirks an eyebrow as if to suggest that Dean would probably do it for less, Hell, he has done it for less.

"But then she realised that she'd been played, that Yellow Eyes had a plan and she was born to it. Yanno, Bobby, her parents were hunters, her grandparents, their parents back as far as anyone could remember." He is picking at the label of his beer bottle with his fingernail, trying to avoid looking at anything, trying to avoid reacting.

He's half convinced that if Bobby sees the fire before he can explain it that Bobby will put him down, because he knows that in Bobby's place he would.

"She spent years trying to find a loophole, five years." Dean's done the math, he knows how long it took.

He's had time to think on it, and he can hear Patsy Cline singing in the back of his head.

"She," he stops, "she made a deal with the Archon, I have no fucking clue what that is so don't ask," he quickly adds, "but she had sex with him so I'd be born, that's why the angels all crowd around me, because I'm some sort of holy half breed that will fight in their war."

"Nephalim," Bobby says without batting an eye. "There are books on them." Maybe Bobby only knows from the books but he doesn't seem surprised. Nothing about the Winchesters surprises Bobby any more. "And the Archon isn't a who, boy, it's a what, it's a title, idjut, didn't you ever pay attention to anything we tried to teach you?"

Dean's pretty sure he would have remembered that, but unless it involved killing and burning things Dean always had a short attention span. "Then . . ." he leaves it open.

"The Archon's supposed to be Lucifer's twin, the angel that didn't fall." Bobby empties his beer with a hearty swallow and gets himself another, popping open the lid before he sits down. "He probably possessed your Dad for the deal." He shrugs his shoulders like this kind of thing happens every day and the Winchester's don't live in some kind of fucked up supernatural soap opera.

"I don't get why, though. The angels keep to themselves. Why now? Because the Apocalypse is coming?"

Dean's laugh is dry and joyless as he explains what he has learned. "Yellow Eyes stirred up enough shit to attract Lilith, she wants to use the colt to kill Lucifer so she can take his armies to war against God."

"Makes sense," Bobby agrees. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." His voice is gruff.

Dean has picked the label of the beer down to the glass. "The angels, they're here just in case, they're pretty sure it's nothing to worry about but, you know, shit happens."

"Especially where you're around." Bobby tells him. "Look, Dean, you got a get out of jail free card dealt to you by your Mom, you've got some Heavenly heavy weights dancing to your tune, and some weird ass spindly thing stalking your brother that only you can see."

Dean shifts in his uncomfortable kitchen chair.

"There's a not-a-dog asleep in front of the fireplace, and you're wearing the kind of jewellery that hunters do their best to lock away or destroy."

Dean's eyes go to the bracelet he didn't think to try to hide. He should have known that Bobby would recognise it.

"And something tells me that aint the half of it, you vanish for two months and come back looking healthier than I've ever seen you, telling stories that are just plain fucked up, and yet you're coping better than you have in years. The question that strikes me is what the hell are you complaining about?"

Dean looks at Bobby for long moments. "I'm a puppet on a string."

Bobby scratches his beard with his palm, then knuckles the side of his nose, they're all familiar gestures that suggest Bobby is thinking. "Seems to me that maybe it's the other way around and that's what scares you."

"Now you get on to bed, I've laid out a sleeping bag in the back room, and don't go using all the hot water." Dean finishes his beer in long greedy swallows. "I've had your brother fussing like a mother hen, and now you complaining," he shakes his head. "I dun someone wrong in a past life," he mutters to himself, "something real wrong."

Dean smiles at Bobby's bitching because it's the only way he shows affection. Bobby's a hunter after all, he doesn't do chick flick moments either. He listens to Bobby stomping up the stairs, muttering to himself about idjut hunters and what did he do to inherit them before he decides to call it a night himself.

First Dean looks out the window to make sure Izzy's all right. He can't see her or the dogs so he carries on to bed.

Bobby's sleeping bags have seen better days, well better years really, but he's slept on worse so he doesn't really care. He strips down to his briefs and climbs in, the nylon is silky and kinda nice against his skin, cool and light.

His feet are cold though and he's just contemplating finding his socks when New Sammy lopes in and plops down beside him, licks his neck, yawns and goes straight back to sleep, with his head across Dean's chest meaning that Dean's not going anywhere any time soon.

He's asleep before he really knows what's hit him.

\----------------------------------------------

Dean wakes up with a weight on his chest, it's so familiar, so pressing-the terror- that at first he doesn't think to struggle. It's the dog, he reassures himself, then he opens his eyes.

Izzy is straddling his chest, in her hands she has a wicked looking knife. "I'm sorry," she says again then she slits his throat.

Dean expects to wake up because that's what happens when people kill you in dreams. What he doesn't expect is the girl in black tights sitting cross-legged on the mat. "Hey," she says.

He knows her, not just a nagging familiarity, but actually knows her from Wayne's kitchen in Chicago. Sitting there looking totally innocuous and completely at home is Death.

"So," Dean says, finding himself sat next to her in jeans and Magda's ugly sweater. "I'm dead."

"Not exactly." Death answers.

"So this is where you offer me a deal?" Dean asks, "Or we play cards or something?"

"Not exactly," she repeats.

"So," Dean asks, "where do we go from here?"

"That's up to you." Death's tone is measured and patient.

"I gotta stay and help Sammy, I gotta watch out for him." Dean isn't above begging. "And Bobby, and Ellen and Jo, and all those people who look out for me and need me to look out for them. I can't be dead."

"You're not," Death repeats, "well not exactly."

"Well pardon me for thinking Death might be sitting next to me because, well, I'm dead!" Dean's pretty sure he's allowed a freak out.

"Mostly dead." She agrees with a smile. "But you don't have to worry any more, you get what you want now." She tells him and it sounds practised.

"Someone's gotta look after Sammy, he'd die tripping over his own laces without me."

"You will," She tells him.

"What?" Dean is shook out of what was shaping up to be a good rant.

"You'll look after Sam." Death says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"You're not taking him too, I'll salt and burn the angelic bitch if she thinks she's going anywhere near Sammy." He frowns, "I'll think of a way, Hell, I'm tenacious when I put my mind to it."

"Dean, you're only mostly dead." She continues, "you will look after Sammy."

"So you haven't come for me?" He sounds sceptical. Death doesn't just show up for kicks, and he hasn't got coffee on.

"Oh, I have," she says. "You know what you are now, right? A Nephal." Dean nods slowly, "So you know you've got angelic super powers right?" He nods again, "and angels don't have souls." She's explaining it to him like he's an idiot. But he's had a hard two months, he appreciates it.

"Don't they?"

"No," she smiles and she has the most amazing smile, "they have grace." Dean accepts that. "And the two can't co-exist, there's no room. You'd go mad, with all the powers of Heaven."

"They managed just fine for thirty years." Dean tells her.

"They didn't. Your grace only came to be when you died, Dean, the first time." She's sure to add that, "well the," she counts it off on her fingers, "the time you went to Hell, and it's been ripping you apart, most of what you can't understand is those two different pieces fighting for dominance of your meat, your flesh."

"But Cas brought me back," he protests.

"Yes, he did, but you sold your soul which meant the Grace was trapped, so he freed your human soul to free your grace and you had both. It was tearing you apart. One of them had to go."

"So, I'm dead?" He asks.

"Only your mortal half," she answers quietly, "your angelic half is still alive and well and it'll look after Sammy, and he'll never know, no one but you and Castiel will ever know."

"Then," he stops himself, "I'm confused."

"It's simple," she tells him with a smile, "your angel side gets to save the day and look after Sammy and have lots of copious angel sex with Castiel, and fight on whatever side of the war in Heaven you choose to and it will be to everyone else like nothing's changed, because you're still you, just with new improved angelic super powers." She smiles prettily again and catches his gaze, "And you get to take it from here."

Dean thinks that the skinny fit tee with the skull design she's wearing with a black kilt is just cute and not what he'd expect Death to wear.

"You don't have to worry about Sammy, or hunting, or anything, because it's all taken care of. You're still you, and you'll look out for him, just with new super powers, and . . ." She throws her hands up, "I hate dealing with these," she admits, "double souls are a pain in my ass. It's like this, you're dead but you're not dead, because the part of you here with me is dead, but there's part of you that's fine and not dead yet, savvy? Like you were twins and the not necessarily evil twin got killed." She's grasping for an explanation, "you seen the Prestige?"

"Well how about you and I blow this popsicle stand and get some coffee and you can explain it better to me there?" He asks with his best shit eating grin. Sure she's Death and she's a goth chick, but she's hot.

"Dean Winchester, are you hitting on me?" She asks and her tone is amused rather than arch.

"Maybe. If you want me to."

Her laughter is a warm ringing. "It's been a long time since someone tried to pick me up," she admits, her black eyes are sparkling with mischief "but you really aren't scared of me at all, are you?"

Dean shakes his head, "What's that old prayer? Death be above me, Death be beside me, Death be my lover," he waggles his eyebrows and leers suggestively, "Death be my yadda yadda yadda." He can't remember the rest. He can't even remember why they don't pray to Death any more.

She loops her arm through his as they stand up. "Coffee," she agrees, "would be great."

"So where do we go from here?" He asks.

Her grin is brilliant, as shit eating as his own, as she answers, "Well. That, Dean, is entirely up to you."


End file.
